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Noise-free high-efficiency photon-number-resolving detectors

Danna Rosenberg·Adriana E. Lita·Aaron J. Miller·Sae Woo Nam
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Abstract

High-efficiency optical detectors that can determine the number of photons in a pulse of monochromatic light have applications in a variety of physics studies, including post-selection-based entanglement protocols for linear optics quantum computing and experiments that simultaneously close the detection and communication loopholes of Bell's inequalities. Here we report on our demonstration of fiber-coupled, noise-free, photon-number-resolving transition-edge sensors with 88% efficiency at 1550 nm. The efficiency of these sensors could be made even higher at any wavelength in the visible and near-infrared spectrum without resulting in a higher dark-count rate or degraded photon-number resolution.

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Danna Rosenberg, Adriana E. Lita, Aaron J. Miller, Sae Woo Nam. 2005-06-21. Noise-free high-efficiency photon-number-resolving detectors. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.71.061803

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