Demonstration of a 1550-nm photon-counting receiver with ≪ 0.5 detected photon-per-bit sensitivity at 187.5 Mb/s

We implemented a photon-counting optical receiver using a periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguide and an emulated array of silicon Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes. We achieved a sensitivity of < 0.5 detected photons/bit at 187.5 Mb/s.