Characterization of single-photon detectors for Quantum Communications

The main goal of this thesis is the characterization of a set of single photon detectors (SPDs) by MPD, used in the field of Quantum Communications. The analysis focuses on two aspects of the detectors: the jitter (electronical noise) and the tail of the detected pulse, related to the relaxation time of the detector. Moreover, we compare the performances of two versions of the same SPD model present in the QuantumFuture group at the University of Padua. Data collection was performed with two setups. The first one, made to study the jitter, uses the SPDC effect - Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion - to obtain two photons, which are detected by SPDs and then treated as coincidences; the analysis of these timestamps was performed with a small software developed as part of the thesis. The second setup involves the application of a pulsed source to a single detector, and the resulting data is plotted properly in order to better show the tail of the distribution and compare that of the various PDMs.