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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)
Noiseless single photon detector development where each pixel is a spectrometer.
Our detectors combined ultra-high photon absorption efficiency and energy resolving capability makes it desirable for photon starved spectroscopy applications. In this usage each pixel is a spectrometer and an array is an imaging field spectrograph on a chip. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will search for faint signs of life on exoplanets by collecting spectra. Noiseless ultra-high efficiency energy-resolving detectors will increase the spectral yield search for life.
These sensors are also under development for quantum information science (QIS) where the high efficiency, no dark counts (no detector false positives), and energy resolution is used to measure energy or photon number states enabling new quantum metrology and quantum communication protocols.
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