NIST physicist Sae Woo Nam works with refrigeration equipment used to cool photon detectors to nearly absolute zero. His team’s efforts have created devices that can detect single photons with 99-percent efficiency.

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the world’s most efficient single photon detector, which is able to count individual particles of light traveling through fiber optic cables with roughly 99-percent efficiency. The team’s efforts could bring improvements to secure electronic communication, advanced quantum computation, and the measurement of optical power.

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