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Superconducting single-photon detectors have become the unquestioned leader in high-performance single-photon detection, counting, and imaging. The lecture will present an overview of the physics of operation of SSPDs and their implementation as the photon-energy, photon-number, and polarization resolving devices. The best devices exhibit quantum efficiency of up to ~30 % in the near-infrared (1550 nm) wavelength range, dark counts < 0.1 per second, and the noise-equivalent power (NEP) of 5x10-21 W/Hz.1/2. Our detector resolved the wavelength of the incident photons with a 50-nm resolution, allowed to achieve some amplitude resolution of the recorded output transients, and allowed us to demonstrate the detector’s sensitivity to photon polarization. New directions of our research, focusing on superconductor/ferromagnetic nanostripes and on feasibility of detectors based on high-temperature superconducting nanostructures will be presented and discussed. 

 

Roman Sobolewski is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, and Materials Science, as well as a Senior Scientist of Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester (UR), Rochester, NY, USA. At the UR Laboratory for Laser Energetics, he is the Head of the Ultrafast Quantum Phenomena Laboratory. Prof. Sobolewski received his Ph.D. and Habilitation degrees in Physics from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland, in 1983 and 1992, respectively. In 2006, he was granted the State Professorship of the Republic of Poland. In 2015, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Kosciuszko Foundation Collegium of Eminent Scientists of Polish Origin and Ancestry. Since 2009, he has been a Co-Chair and Co-Organizer of the Photon Counting Applications conferences during the Biennial SPIE Europe Optics + Optoelectronics Meeting in Prague, Czech. Dr. Sobolewski is the Optical Society of America Travelling Lecturer and already delivered lectures in China, Poland, and Italy. He published over 400 peer-reviewed publications and presented well over 200 invited conference talks, lectures, seminars, and colloquia worldwide. He is a co-inventor of five US and international patents.