Photon-Counting Spectrometers Based on Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors

Optical spectrum analysis provides a wealth of information about the physical world. Throughout the development of optical spectrum analysis, sensitivity has been one of the major topics and has become essential in applications dealing with faint light. Various high-sensitivity optical detection tec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Electromagnetic Science
Main Authors: Mingzhong Hu, Jingyuan Zheng, Kaiyu Cui, Wei Zhang, Yidong Huang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Chinese Institute of Electronics 2024-09-01
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Online Access:https://www.emscience.org/en/article/doi/10.23919/emsci.2024.0019
Description
Summary:Optical spectrum analysis provides a wealth of information about the physical world. Throughout the development of optical spectrum analysis, sensitivity has been one of the major topics and has become essential in applications dealing with faint light. Various high-sensitivity optical detection technologies have been applied in optical spectrum analysis to enhance its sensitivity to single-photon level. As an emerging single-photon detection technology, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have many impressive features such as high detection efficiency, broad operation bandwidth, small timing jitter, and so on, which make them promising for enhancing the performance of optical spectral analysis. Diverse schemes for photon-counting spectrometers based on SNSPDs have been demonstrated. This article reviews these impressive works and prospects for the future development of this technology. Further breakthroughs can be expected in its theories, device performance, applications, and combinations with in-sensor computing, promoting it to be a mature and versatile solution for optical spectrum analysis on ultra-faint light.
ISSN:2836-9440
2836-8282