The coming of Single Photons on a detection sleigh
“Oh what fun it is to run in a one-photon detection sleigh”!

“Dashing through Polyboard, as a one-photon sleigh,
over the EM fields we go, coloring all the way.
Light from Bob’s ring, making Alice bright
What fun it is to pass beyond Eve a sleighing photon.

Photon one, photon two, travel all the way,
Oh what fun it is to flight on a one-photon sleigh.
A picosecond or two ago I thought I’d take a ride,
and soon Miss Eve was eavesdropping by my side.
The guide was lean and lank, waving seemed a lot,
the photon drifted apart and Alice seemed upset.

Photon you, photon her, travel to the SPAD,
Dashing through the waveguide, in a quantum photonic chip.
Single photons, single photons detected by the SPAD,
Oh what fun it is to generate an electron-hole pair.
Single counting, single counting, since we all count,
Oh what fun it is to be read by counters and TDCs.

Now Silicon is there to stop, the visible and the near-infrared,
Catching photons right, one per pixel each.
Just get 16 pixel in a row, or even 32,
Then measure each time-of-flight, and crack! Electrons will take the lead.

Single Photon Avalanche Diode cameras for photon counting and beyond
Researchers at Micro Photon Devices (MPD), Italy, have developed compact modules and cameras based on silicon and InGaAs SPAD detectors for visible and near-infrared single-photon counting, and accurate measurement of time-of-flight and photons’ time-correlations. The cointegration of SPAD imagers and real-time processing enable to acquire extremely faint and fast light waveforms, down to one photon per event, with picosecond resolution for 2D imaging and 3D ranging applications.