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Andrew J. Kerman11:00 a.m.
April 25, 2007
Tech L324
| Dr. Andrew J. Kerman
Optical Communications Technology Group,
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
"Superconducting NbN-Nanowire Single Photon Detectors" | | I will discuss our ongoing work on single-photon detectors based on superconducting NbN nanowires. These devices show promise as an enabling technology in a number of areas, due to their favorable combination of high speed (<30 ps timing resolution, ~3 ns reset time), high detection efficiency (70% demonstrated at 1550 nm), and broadband response from UV through mid-infrared. Possible applications include high data rate photon-counting optical communications, spectroscopy of ultrafast quantum phenomena in biological and solid-state physics, quantum key distribution and quantum computation, astrophysics, laser radar, and high-speed noninvasive digital circuit testing. After providing an overview of the basic operating principles of these nanowire devices, I will present some of our recent results, including investigations into their detection mechanism, detection efficiency, and reset time; improvements to their optical design; progress towards detector arrays; and finally, a demonstration experiment in which we use one of these detectors in a high-data-rate photon-counting optical receiver. This work is sponsored by the United States Air Force under Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, recommendations and conclusions are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.
Dr. Andrew J. Kerman received a B.S. degree with honors in physics and applied mathematics from Williams College in 1993. After a year as a research assistant in atomic and condensed-matter physics at Harvard University under professor Isaac Silvera, he began a Ph.D. in the field of atomic physics and atomic laser cooling and trapping at Stanford University with professor Steven Chu, graduating in 2002. He did postdoctoral work at Yale University with professor David DeMille on the production of ultracold polar molecules for quantum computation, as well as at MIT with professor Wolfgang Ketterle in the area of ultracold fermions. In 2004, he joined the optical communications technology group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he conducts ongoing research on superconducting nanowire photon-counters. In 2006, he began working also with the analog device technology group on quantum computing with superconducting flux qubits. His current research interests include quantum and electro-optical devices, quantum computation and communication, and non-equilibrium superconductivity. Photo. |
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