Santalum Posted January 31, 2012 Posted January 31, 2012 When phyicists say that their laser is firing single photons, how do they know that? How do you verify that it is firing a single photon and not a small cluster of photons?
swansont Posted January 31, 2012 Posted January 31, 2012 When phyicists say that their laser is firing single photons, how do they know that? How do you verify that it is firing a single photon and not a small cluster of photons? Attenuate the signal so that the number of transmitted photons is sufficiently small, e.g. if you are emitting 10^10 photon/sec, you attenuate by more than 10 orders of magnitude. You can do single-photon detection to confirm that you have single photons.
Santalum Posted January 31, 2012 Author Posted January 31, 2012 You can do single-photon detection to confirm that you have single photons. How do you do that?
swansont Posted February 1, 2012 Posted February 1, 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-photon_avalanche_diode is one way
Santalum Posted February 1, 2012 Author Posted February 1, 2012 http://en.wikipedia....avalanche_diode is one way I take it the amperage/voltage of the cascade current gives a measure of the number of photons that 'hit' it?
swansont Posted February 1, 2012 Posted February 1, 2012 I take it the amperage/voltage of the cascade current gives a measure of the number of photons that 'hit' it? Right.
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