The team's new development will improve visualization technologies: displays of entire forests and mountain
Bowen Lee, who led the new study, said they used a technique called "time-correlated counting" in their worksingle photons" (TCSPC).
This is similar to the timer used toscoring athletes: Scientists first direct a laser beam at a sample of their choice, from individual proteins to a massive geological formation, and then record the photons that bounce off them. The more photons the researchers collect, the more they can learn about this object.
TTCSPC gives you the total number of photons and shows the time when each photon hitsinto your detector, so the new device is somewhat reminiscent of a stopwatch.
Bowen Lee, lead author of the new study,
In order to improve this technology, the authorsThe new work used a temporary lens optical instrument to measure the arrival of photons with an accuracy more than 100 times superior to existing instruments.
To understand how this works, imagine twophoton in the form of two runners who move close and very fast, so that neither one is inferior to the other. Lee and his colleagues send both of these photons through a temporary lens made up of loops of silica filaments. In the process, one of the photons slows down while the other accelerates. There is a large gap between the runners, which can be fixed by the detector.
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