TsukubaEach photon a superconductor absorbs makes a pair of magnetic flux quanta.
Transition-edge sensors resolve photon numbers slowly, while nanowire detectors are fast but cannot count.
Voltage pulses from flux quanta crossing the superconductor are quantized, so counting them gives the photon number directly.
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology says industrial integration has only just begun.
How each outlet framed it
- Phys.org leans favorable
- reports AIST's photon-number detector counts flux quanta in a superconductor, pitching it for industrial quantum computing rather than lab use
Sources: Phys.org