NEWSNOTES

Novel Photon
Detectors Debut
Every detector has its drawbacks.
Photographic emulsions record only a few
percent of the photons (light particles)
that fall on them. Charge-coupled devices,
or CCDs, do far better, but their efficiency
is colorblind; they cannot determine a
photons wavelength, which can range
anywhere from 1 micron, just beyond the
red end of the visible spectrum, to 13 mi-
cron, just beyond the blue end. Further-
more, CCDs are not very good at reveal-
ing rapid brightness variations.
The perfect astronomical light detector,
by contrast, would capture incoming
photons instantaneously, registering the
arrival time and wavelength (or equiva-
lently, the energy *) of each. Long a mere
fantasy, such devices may see widespread
use in the near future. Two prototypes
have now been tested on the Crab Nebula
pulsar. Each detector was able to time ar-
riving photons with enough precision to
track the pulsars lighthouselike flashes,
which recur 30 times a second. And each
was able to measure photon energies

NOAO
without relying on filters, prisms, or dif-
fraction gratings. That has not been pos-
sible with any other detector, says Michael A. C. Perryman (European Space to ESAs pioneering superconducting tun-
Agency), who has advocated for this kind nel junction (STJ) detector and to its cur-
* A photons energy in electron volts equals 1.24 of capability since the early 1990s. rently more effective competitor, the
divided by its wavelength in microns. Superconducting materials are the key transition edge sensor (TES) spectropho-
tometer, built by Stanford University
Last January Stanford University astronomers used their new superconducting light detector physicists. In a CCD, Perryman explains,
(below left) and a 24-inch telescope to measure the spectrum of the Crab Nebula pulsar (ar- a typical visible-light photon has enough
rowed above) thousands of times each second. Summarized in the figure at right below, their energy (1 or 2 electron volts) to liberate
data told them that the Crab pulsar absorbs roughly 20 percent of its own near-infrared light just one electron, which then can be col-
whenever the brighter of its two opposing beams sweeps past Earth. lected in the form of an electrical current.

1,500
Number of detected photons

SOURCE: ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS

1,000

500

4
0
3 )
0 olts
2 nv
0.5 t ro
ROGER ROMANI

1 (e lec
Phase 1.5 1
ne rg y
0 to ne
Pho

20 November 1999 Sky & Telescope 1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
In an STJ device, by contrast, an electron
can be freed up by as little as 11000 electron
volt. Furthermore, the number of liberat-
ed electrons is proportional to the pho-
tons energy. (In the TES device photons
actually diminish current, but they are
equally able to exploit superconductivity
in order to increase energy resolution.)
Both detectors can be pushed into the
midinfrared portion of the electromag-
netic spectrum, where photons pack too
little punch to register on CCDs.
The next step, says Perryman, is to
build arrays of superconductors so ener-
gy and timing information can be ob-
tained over extended fields of view. In
December his team hopes to pursue
other pulsars with a 10-pixel-by-10-pixel
STJ device on the 4.2-meter William
Herschel Telescope. (A 6-by-6 array was
used last February in the groups Crab
study.) The Stanford TES group is also
building pixel arrays and plans to deploy
them at McDonald Observatory this
winter. But superconducting light detec-
tors wont really reach their potential
until they go into space, says Stanford
astronomer Roger W. Romani, because
only there can they exploit a much wider
portion of the spectrum.
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A Far-Out Brown
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Brown dwarfs are failed stars that
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popped up as a feeble 20th-magni-
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1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope November 1999 21