Pankaj Jha
Syracuse University, NY·Physics
Counting individual particles of light is the basic measurement behind quantum computing with photons, secure quantum communication, and imaging so sensitive that only a handful of photons arrive. The best detectors available for this job are superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs): a hair-thin superconducting wire carries current with no resistance until a single photon lands, briefly breaking superconductivity and producing a measurable voltage blip.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
single-photon detector
superconducting nanowire
iron chalcogenide
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Characterize how thickness, temperature and substrate affect superconductivity in nanometer-thin Fe(Te,Se) iron-chalcogenide flakes, using low-temperature optical spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements.
- Determine the microscopic mechanism of photodetection in Fe(Te,Se) by nanofabricating strips ranging from 100 nanometers to 10 micrometers wide and measuring their electrical transport response.
- Build and test Fe(Te,Se) nanowire single-photon detectors, quantifying quantum efficiency, dark count rate and maximum count rate to establish performance above liquid-helium temperature.
- Provide hands-on quantum technology laboratory research experience to students from K-12 through undergraduate levels as part of the detector development work.
More about the research
They catch nearly every photon, fire rarely by accident, and time arrivals precisely. Their drawback is temperature — most need to be held below 4 kelvin, colder than liquid helium, which requires bulky and expensive refrigeration and keeps the technology out of most labs and out of compact systems.
Why it matters
Single-photon detectors that work above liquid-helium temperature would shrink the cooling hardware that currently makes quantum optics bulky and costly, making the technology more accessible and easier to scale. Detectors built from iron-chalcogenide superconductors could support quantum computing and communication with light, integrated quantum photonics on chips, deep-space imaging, and sensitive biomedical measurements.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Heike Pfau
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Physics·Early-career
Use uniaxial pressure cells to strain unconventional superconductors and measure their changing electronic structure with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), to uncover the interactions that cause electrons to pair.
Alexander Khanikaev
University of Central Florida, FL·Physics
Develop a basic understanding of how light interacts with matter in quantum Floquet systems, whose properties are set by rhythmic driving in time, and identify how these interactions can be used for sensing.
Kenneth Burch
Boston College, MA·Physics
Determine whether the boundary mode observed in FeTeSe superconductors reflects true topological order by systematically varying device configurations and material parameters.
The school
Syracuse University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $199M a year on research, 168 research doctorates a year.
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