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RIT team awarded $2.8-million grant to build light detector

Bennett J. Loudon • Staff writer • October
23, 2008

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If Donald Figer and his colleagues at Rochester Institute of
Technology are successful, the technology behind today's digital
cameras might someday become as old-fashioned as the film they
replaced.

Figer's research team was awarded a $2.8 million grant from the
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to create a light detector that
will actually count individual photons of light, especially useful
to astronomers studying deep space.

Current technology uses sensors that can be triggered by
electronic "noise" within the electronic device itself, resulting in
a grainy, speckled image, especially in low-light conditions.

"In our detector we're doing something radically different. Each
photon of light is being counted," said Figer, director of the
Rochester Imaging Detector Laboratory at RIT's Chester F. Carlson
Center for Imaging Science.

Figer and about a half-dozen graduate students and other
professionals will start with prototype technology that can detect
bunches of photons. The prototype was developed at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where scientists are collaborating with the
RIT team.

Not only will Figer's team have to tinker with the basic
engineering of the prototype circuits so they can detect a single
photon, but they must stuff those circuits into a ridiculously small
space — eventually a 20-by-20-micron square pixel. A micron is one
millionth of a meter.

Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University
of Rochester, said astronomers already have extremely advanced
telescopes satisfactory for most work.

"But there are still quite a few important astronomy problems
involving extremely low background-light levels, for which the
devices Don describes would be a healthy improvement over the state
of the art," Watson said.

Figer said the project will take about four years and be used on
huge telescopes to see light so far away that it dates from the
beginning of the universe.

As grandiose as that all sounds, the technology could wind up in
much more mundane gadgets, such as digital cameras and surveillance
cameras, and satellites.

"This kind of transformative technology could create new
applications, thus expanding the marketplace and really creating new
jobs," said Figer.

It could be a while before the technology
shows up at Circuit City, however. Initially, a single detector like
he's creating could cost $500,000, he said.

[email-masked]

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RIT Professor Don Figer heads a research team that will work on
developing a photon detector for use in imaging devices such as space
telescopes and digital cameras. (ANNETTE LEIN staff photographer)

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