Photons a la Mode: Studying light pulses by counting photons
Thursday, August 15, 2013 - 08:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —The photodetectors in Alan Migdall's lab often see no light at all, and that's a good thing since he and his JQI colleagues perform physics experiments that require very little light, the better to study subtle quantum effects. The bursts of light they observe typically consist of only one or two photons—- the particle form of light—-or (statistically speaking) even less than one photon. Their latest achievement is to develop a new way of counting photons to understand the sources and modes of light in modern physics experiments.