Highest-resolution single-photon superconducting camera
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have built a superconducting camera containing 400,000 pixels — 400 times more than any other device of its type.
Superconducting cameras allow scientists to capture very weak light signals, whether from distant objects in space or parts of the human brain. Having more pixels could open up many new applications in science and biomedical research.
The NIST camera is made up of grids of ultrathin electrical wires, cooled to near absolute zero, in which current moves with no resistance until a wire is struck by a photon. In these superconducting-nanowire cameras, the energy imparted by even a single photon can be detected because it shuts down the superconductivity at a particular location (pixel) on the grid. Combining all the locations and intensities of all the photons makes up an image.
The first superconducting cameras capable of detecting single photons were developed more than 20 years ago. Since then, the devices have contained no more than a few thousand pixels — too limited for most applications.
Creating a superconducting camera with a greater number of pixels has posed a serious challenge because it would become all but impossible to connect every single chilled pixel among many thousands to its own readout wire. The challenge stems from the fact that each of the camera’s superconducting components must be cooled to ultralow temperatures to function properly, and individually connecting every pixel among millions to the cooling system would be virtually impossible.
NIST researchers Adam McCaughan and Bakhrom Oripov and their collaborators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the University of Colorado Boulder overcame that obstacle by combining the signals from many pixels onto just a few room-temperature readout wires.
A general property of any superconducting wire is that it allows current to flow freely up to a certain maximum “critical” current. To take advantage of that behavior, the researchers applied a current just below the maximum to the sensors. Under that condition, if even a single photon strikes a pixel, it destroys the superconductivity. The current is no longer able to flow without resistance through the nanowire and is instead shunted to a small resistive heating element connected to each pixel. The shunted current creates an electrical signal that can rapidly be detected. More