Speaker
Dr
Francois Leonard
(Sandia National Laboratories)
Description
Detecting light from the single to the few photon level is important for many applications in science, including quantum key distribution, high-resolution lidar, biology, and high-energy physics. In the past decades, exquisite performance has been reached for new types of photodetectors, including superconducting nanowires, avalanche photodiodes, and those harnessing CMOS technology. Still several fundamental questions remain regarding the ultimate performance that can be achieved, what architecture is needed, and what physical systems could realize these architectures. In this presentation, I will discuss our efforts at developing a new theory and modeling approach to understand the properties of classical and quantum photodetectors from fundamental physics and show how this approach can be used to design new types of detectors with improved performance. Experimental examples of the realization of such detectors will also be presented. Finally, I will end with a discussion of a specific design relevant to high-energy physics: an energy-resolving detector with low jitter.
Primary author
Dr
Francois Leonard
(Sandia National Laboratories)
