NIST researchers develop revolutionary detector for quantum communications system. (News Briefs).NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. , in collaboration with Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. and Boston University Boston University, at Boston, Mass.; coeducational; founded 1839, chartered 1869, first baccalaureate granted 1871. It is composed of 16 schools and colleges. , has demonstrated the first quantum-communications detector system that not only indicates when a photon arrives, but also determines how many photons arrive simultaneously. As a result, this new system can extract far more information from quantum-entangled photons than conventional detectors. The new detectors are based on superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES TES Times Educational Supplement (publication) TES The Elder Scrolls (series of computer games) TES Thermal Emission Spectrometer TES Teaching Every Student TES Thermal Energy Storage ) microcalorimeter technology, similar to that developed by EEEL EEEL Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory (NIST) for high-efficiency x-ray spectroscopy. The new TES photon counters have a very broad spectral response, from the near-infrared (3000 nm) through the visible and into the deep-ultraviolet (100 am) with a quantum efficiency of about 50%. Unlike traditional semiconductor-based photon counters, these TES photon counters do not suffer from dark counts, nor do they have a gap-limited infrared cut-off. Even more exciting is the ability of the TES photon counter to provide the energy of the incoming photon. For broadband sources, this resolution capability allows spectral information to be determined from each photon. For monochromatic monochromatic /mono·chro·mat·ic/ (-kro-mat´ik) 1. existing in or having only one color. 2. pertaining to or affected by monochromatic vision. 3. staining with only one dye at a time. sources, such as quantum-entangled photon sources, the energy resolution capability allows the elimination of the multiphoton confusion problem of conventional detectors. A four-channel system designed around TES devices is under construction as a full Bell-state analyzer and may be very useful as a broadband detector calibration instrument based entirely on quantum standards. A demonstration of the four-channel instrument is underway using a correlated photon source at Boston University. CONTACT: Aaron Miller, (303) 497-4212; ajmiller@boulder.nist.gov. |
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