The developments of novel technologies as well as the advancements in science knowledge have frequently been led by improvements in measurement capacity. Single photon detectors (SPDs) compose one of the most attractive devices due to the ability of registering light at its fundamental level. This is an extremely demanding challenge since the energy of a single photon in the near-infrared range is in the order of 10^(-19)J and therefore SPDs have to be exceptionally sensible in order to produce an electronic signal upon the arrival of one photon.
Even though competitive SPD technologies are available for the visible and in the near-infrared range, the mid-infrared (MIR) spectral region lacks in a performant analogue. A detector able to register individual photons in this wavelength range (2.5-25μm) would be extremely desirable for many areas of technology and science, from analysis in industry to advanced research applications. In the MIR spectral range reside vibrational modes of several molecules as well as fundamental absorption bands of gases, intersubband transitions in quantum wells and specific fingerprints of chemical species. A detector sensible at single photon level would greatly boost the field of vibrational and MIR spectroscopy.
By taking advantage of superconducting nanowire SPDs (SNSPDs), the goal of ShaMROCk is to realize an efficient, fast and accurate SPD operating in the MIR with a minimum number of dark counts. This tantalizing perspective can be reached by merging SNSPD technology with Silicon Carbide (SiC) photonics. Due to the presence of quantum emitters, the development of SNSPDs on top SiC photonic components is additionally important as this material is emerging as scalable platform for quantum information processing with photons.
