2017/06/03 by Johannes Kröger, Kröger, Johannes, Thomas J. Ahrens +9
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Optical Sensing Technologies #Advanced Semiconductor Detectors and Materials #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1706.00949
openalex publication_date 2017/06/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Photon-number measurements are a fundamental technique for the discrimination and characterization of quantum states of light. Beyond the abilities of state-of-the-art devices, we present measurements with an array of 100 avalanche photodiodes exposed to photon-numbers ranging from well below to significantly above one photon per diode. Despite each single diode only discriminating between zero and non-zero photon-numbers we are able to extract characteristic information about the quantum state. We demonstrate a vast enhancement of the applicable intensity range by two orders of magnitude relative to the standard application of such devices. It turns out that the probabilistic mapping of arbitrary photon-numbers on a finite number of registered clicks is not per se a disadvantage compared with true photon counters. Such detector arrays can bridge the gap between single-photon and linear detection, by directly using the recorded data, without the need of elaborate data reconstruction methods.