Silicon Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes (Si GM-APDs) have desirable properties for an optical
photon-counting receiver, including high single-photon detection efficiency, low reset time, and low
timing jitter; however, they do not detect near-IR photons. In this work, we demonstrated a sensitive
photon-counting receiver in the near-IR by combining a wavelength converter consisting of a
periodically-poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide and a commercial Si GM-APD detector. We
measured a receiver sensitivity from 1.4 to 3.5 incident photons/bit from 5.5 Mb/s to 22 Mb/s for a
single detector, and achieved a sensitivity of 4 photons/bit at 78 Mb/s using an emulated array of 25
detectors.
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