SNSPD camera for photon research. Free Technical Library News

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SNSPD camera for photon research

22.11.2023

Scientists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a camera equipped with a superconducting single-photon nanowire detector (SNSPD), capable of processing information at 400 times greater resolution than current analogues, without losing other key characteristics. This significant advance could lead to large-scale SNSPD cameras capable of capturing images of single photons across a wide electromagnetic spectrum.

The unveiled SNSPD camera with new readout technologies opens a new era in the field of photon detection, providing the ability to process images at unprecedented resolution. A revolutionary approach to creating a camera with a large number of pixels could lead to significant changes in the field of photonics and optics.

The first SNSPD cameras appeared two decades ago, sparking a revolution in the field of optics. They involve arrays of nanofilaments cooled to near absolute zero. Each filament carries electric current below a critical point where superconductivity is lost. When a photon collides with a nanofilament, the heat it absorbs temporarily disrupts superconductivity. This allows the camera to accurately determine the location of each photon.

SNSPDs have outstanding performance: they work with any photon wavelength up to 29 nm and provide detection efficiency of 98% at 1550 nm. Despite these advantages, SNSPD scaling has been hampered by the need for independent readout threads for each pixel, limiting their resolution to 1000 pixels.

The team solved this problem by detecting photons using parallel readout lines located in each row and column. This method, different from directly reading the electrical signal, allowed the camera to pinpoint where the photon was absorbed. The assembled camera is capable of recording 400 pixels, which is 000 times greater than the capabilities of the most modern analogues. Further improvements promise even greater achievements in this area.

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Random news from the Archive

Salt heating 08.12.2001

Located in the suburbs of Frankfurt am Main (Germany), a large plant of the chemical company "Hoechst" produces medicines, chamfers, plastics, food additives. It also generates a lot of waste heat.

Until recently, heated air was simply thrown into the atmosphere, hot water was cooled (which used a lot of energy) and dumped into the Main. Now excess heat is transported to the city in thermoses and used to heat the administrative building with an area of 17 square meters, which employs about 600 people.

Thermally insulated containers contain sodium acetate - a salt that melts at 58 degrees Celsius and accumulates a large amount of heat in the process. Cooling down, the salt melt heats the water in the heating system of the building. Depending on the weather, five or six containers are delivered per day, one is enough for the night. Cooled thermoses are taken back to the plant and again "charged" with heat. 400 thousand liters of liquid fuel are saved per year.

And the University of Nottingham (England) proposed a cooling system based on the same principle. The heat from the heated air is pumped into containers with solid sodium sulfate, it melts, and the temperature in the rooms drops by 2 - 3 degrees. For a relatively cool English summer, this is enough. Energy saving compared to a conventional air conditioner - 16 times.

In different countries, pocket heating pads and refrigerated salt packs have long been produced, charged with cold or heat in hot water or a refrigerator.

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