Abstract
Transition-edge sensors (TES) are calorimetric spectrometers that have near unit efficiency and are photon-number resolving. A recovery time on the order of microseconds, however, limits the number resolving ability and timing accuracy in high photon-flux conditions. This can be addressed by pulsing the light source or discarding overlapping signals, thereby limiting its applicability. A method that works for stationary light sources uses the differentiated TES signal to determine the detection time of overlapping signals and to count photons [1]. However, the low signal-to-noise ratio of TES response when detecting near-infrared photons complicates the direct estimation of their detection times by this method. Here, we present an alternative approach where we use a discriminator inherently robust against noise to coarsely locate pulses in time, the integral of the identified signal regions to count photons, and a separate fit to determine the exact detection instant.
© 2017 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
Jianwei Lee, Lijiong Shen, Alessandro Cerè, and Christian Kurtsiefer
jsv_p_2 European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC) 2019
Boris L. Glebov, Jingyun Fan, Alan L. Migdall, Adriana E. Lita, Sae Woo Nam, and Thomas Gerrits
FM3A.1 CLEO: QELS_Fundamental Science (CLEO:FS) 2014
Antia Lamas-Linares, Thomas Gerrits, Nathan A. Tomlin, Adriana E. Lita, Brice Calkins, Jörn Beyer, Richard P. Mirin, and Sae Woo Nam
QTu3E.1 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO:FS) 2012