A photon counting reconstructive spectrometer combining metasurfaces and superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors

Abstract: Faint light spectroscopy has many important applications such as fluorescence spectroscopy, lidar and astronomical observations. However, long measurement time limit its application on real-time measurement. In this work, a photon counting reconstructive spectrometer combining metasurfaces and superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) was proposed. A prototype device was fabricated on a silicon on isolator (SOI) substrate, and its performance was characterized. Experiment results show that this device support spectral reconstruction of mono-color lights with a resolution of 2 nm in the wavelength region of 1500 nm ~ 1600 nm. The detection efficiency of this device is 1.4% ~ 3.2% in this wavelength region. The measurement time required by this photon counting reconstructive spectrometer was also investigated experimentally, showing its potential to be applied in the scenarios requiring real-time measurement.