Nanowerk February 25, 2024 Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have been widely used to study the discrete nature of quantum states of light in the form of photon-counting experiments. Researchers in Germany showed that SNSPDs can also be used to study continuous variables of optical quantum states by performing homodyne detection at a bandwidth of 400 kHz. By measuring the interference of a continuous-wave field of a local oscillator with the field of the vacuum state using two SNSPDs, they showed that the variance of the difference in count rates was linearly proportional to the photon flux of the local […]
Tag Archives: Single-photon detector
A new wavelength of scientific exploration with single-photon detectors
Phys.org January 31, 2024 Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are a mature photon-counting technology as demonstrated by their figures of merit such as high detection efficiencies and very low dark count rates. However, scaling SNSPDs to large array sizes for mid-infrared applications requires sophisticated readout architectures in addition to superconducting materials development. Researchers at NIST, Boulder, Colorado, developed an SNSPD array design that combined a thermally coupled row-column multiplexing architecture with a thermally coupled time-of-flight transmission line for mid-infrared applications. It required only six cables and could be scaled to larger array sizes. The demonstration of a 64-pixel array showed […]