Superconducting nanowire single-photon spectrometer exploiting cascaded photonic crystal cavities

Understand

Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors promise efficient (~100%) and fast (~Gcps) detection of light at the single-photon level.

• They constitute one of the building blocks to realize integrated quantum optical circuits in a waveguide architecture.
• The optical response of single-photon detectors, however, is limited to measure only the presence of photons.
• It misses the capability to resolve the spectrum of a possible broadband illumination.