Optical sensing is a vast and rapidly expanding field, demanding future applications require revolutionary sensors with high detection efficiency, high time resolution, spectral resolution, and statistical analysis of light. There are however no detectors currently available offering all these features simultaneously.

In INSPECT we will combine integrated photonics with superconducting detector technology to realise a micro-meter sized spectrometer combining the described functionalities, all at once. The detectors’ high quantum efficiency, state of the art timing resolution, and close to unity coupling to nanosized waveguides allow for previously inaccessible regimes of photon detection in both academia and industry, such as combining spectral analysis with direct measurements on higher order photon statistics.

The project brings together the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm with its strong expertise in quantum integrated photonics and Single Quantum BV, founded in 2012, that supplies high-performance single photon detectors.