Demonstration of a low-noise near-infrared photon counter with multiphoton discrimination 论文

详细信息

发表期刊/会议

Applied Physics Letters

发表日期

2003-07-24

发表年份

2003

摘要

We have demonstrated a system capable of directly measuring the photon-number state of a single pulse of light using a superconducting transition-edge sensor microcalorimeter. We verify the photon-number distribution of a weak pulsed-laser source at 1550 nm. Such single-photon metrology at telecommunication wavelengths provides the foundation for ensuring the security of photon sources used in implementations of quantum cryptography. Additionally, this system has the lowest noise equivalent power of any single-photon detector and combines high efficiency near-infrared photon counting with the ability to resolve multiphoton absorption events.