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Physics

Optical physics and communications

News and Updates

NIST chip containing a single-photon detector made of superconducting nanowires. Four chips like this were used in the experiment that entangled three photons.

Unity in the Photon Community

The creation and detection of single photons (the smallest units of light) has grown in a few decades from an experimental laboratory pursuit to an important

Events

Projects and Programs

Waveform Metrology Project

Ongoing
The Waveform Metrology Project provides measurement and algorithmic support for waveform traceability to the optics and high-frequency electronics industries
Figure 1. Class of optical setup considered in this work. The aperture can be limiting (as shown in this case) or nonlimiting.

Diffraction effects in radiometry

Ongoing
We want to quantify the breakdown of geometrical optics when computing the throughput of optical systems for the purpose of calculating "diffraction corrections

Publications

Single-photon Sources and Detectors Dictionary

Author(s)
Joshua Bienfang, Thomas Gerrits, Paulina Kuo, Alan Migdall, Sergey Polyakov, Oliver T. Slattery
The intention of this dictionary is to define relevant terms and metrics used in the characterization of single-photon detectors and sources with the goal to

Software

Modeled integrated scatter tool (MIST)

The MIST program has been developed to provide users with a general application to model an integrated scattering system. The program performs an integration of

HolograFREE

An electron hologram is a fringe modulated image containing the amplitude and phase information of an electron transparent object. The HolograFREE routines

Tools and Instruments

Transfer spectrophotometer

A Perkin-Elmer Lambda 1050 spectrophotometer is used to complement the reference reflectance and transmittance instruments. It performs this function by

Awards