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Abstract
We present a scheme for a photon-counting detection system that can be operated at
incident photon rates higher than otherwise possible by suppressing the effects of
detector deadtime. The method uses an array of N detectors and a 1-by-N optical switch
with a control circuit to direct input light to live detectors. Our calculations and
models highlight the advantages of the technique. In particular, using this scheme,
a group of N detectors provides an improvement in operation rate that can exceed the
improvement that would be obtained by a single detector with deadtime reduced by 1/N,
even if it were feasible to produce a single detector with such a large improvement
in deadtime. We model the system for continuous and pulsed light sources, both of
which are important for quantum metrology and quantum key distribution applications.