Investigation of the avalanche delay effect in sine-gated single-photon detector

A sine-gated single-photon detector (SPD) intended for use in a quantum key distribution (QKD) system is considered in this paper. An “avalanche delay” effect in the sine-gated SPD is revealed. This effect consists in the appearance of an avalanche triggered at the next gate after the photon arrival gate. It has been determined experimentally that the nature of this effect is not related to the known effects of afterpulsing or charge persistence. This effect negatively affects the overall error rate in the QKD system. The influence of the main detector control parameters, such as temperature, gate amplitude and comparator’s threshold voltage, on the avalanche delay effect was experimentally established.