Did You Ever See a Photon?
Explore the fascinating journey of photon observation and the evolution of quantum technologies. Professor Caccia and Hamamatsu Photonics reveals the groundbreaking transition from traditional photomultiplier tubes to advanced Silicon Photomultipliers, enabling the detection and counting of single photons. This technological leap has unveiled the mysteries of the quantum world, empowering scientific exploration and paving the way for revolutionary advancements.
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Transcript
00:00:00 [Music] in the 20s of last centuries awareness that The World Is Not What It Seems fleshed in the Mind of a handful of scientist a series of experiments open the gate leading to the quantum world today one 100 years after these discoveries Quantum Technologies are bound to change our life the world conceived as being made of either ping
00:00:49 pong balls or waves what I see when I throw a stone in the quiet water of a lake was discovered to be made of fluid entities behaving like either both or waves depending on the observed phenomena scientists discovered that Atomic systems being unveiled at the time do not absorb Orit colors in a continuous series but only specific lines specific colors that actually
00:01:17 characterizing every element light itself govern and described by the beautiful and elegant Maxell equation was identified to be a collection of ballet light ballets Nam photons Albert Einstein gave his contribution in 1905 paper investigating the properties of the photoelectric effect one of the most mysterious Quantum phenomena he proposed the
00:01:49 existence of photons in 1921 for he Discovery he received the Nobel Prize how comes that we never perceived the essence of the quantum World researchers in 1942 at Columbia University investigated the sensitivity of our own eyes the most beautiful tools that you can imagine good for nearly everything but not for perving single phot actually they demonstrated that we need to have
00:02:19 at least 20 to 30 Quant of light to blink our eyes and to be able to say I saw something how do you see then a photo if you cannot hear the music played by your favorite artist you Pump Up the Volume of your speakers if you don't see a photon what do you do you then amplify the stimulus that it provides this is the essence of the photo multiplier tube
00:02:47 invented in 1934 by RCA actually exploiting the photoelectric effect moded by Einstein you have essentially one Photon in which is inducing a Cascade of electrons 1 million electrons out in a nanc giving you a current pulse which is allowing you to detect the arrival of the Quantum of light this was the age of the thermionic VES of computers that were filling in large
00:03:19 rooms providing a Computing capabilities that did a tiny fraction or whatever is today in the pocket of each of us a cell phone Quantum Technologies are certainly a revolution but we're living in the Silicon age since the first embodiment about one trillion of chips are produced every year they make our life fully digital this revolution applies also to
00:03:48 single Photon sensitive devices yesterday it was the photo multiplier tube today is a tiny piece of silicon tiled with cells the blink the eyes whenever a photon drops in these are the so-called silicon photo multipliers and here are these little toys in actions we have a light source which is spraying Bunches of photons on Silicon photo multipliers and the cells
00:04:23 blinks and so they tell you how many photons we have and it can be either one two 2 three four five 6 7 and so on and so forth offering the user the possibility to see the weakest lies and to see actually how intense the pulse was counting photos one by one provides researchers an amazing tool for their investigation but it goes much Beyond pure science curiosity driven research
00:04:56 he enters the development of new tools for Di agnostics in medicine for biological investigations for new devices against terrorism and even for cyber security this will be the subject of the next video clips in the series so don't miss it stay [Music] tuned
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