This week, Amélie De Koninck completed the first part of her voluntary student internship in our group. With us, she was able to gain many impressions of experimental physics, especially quantum optics. Together with Timon Schapeler, who supervised the internship, she experienced everyday life in the laboratory. The aim was to investigate the statistics of attenuated laser light using a 4-bin multiplexed single-photon detector. To do this, Amélie first fiber coupled the laser light. Afterwards, the superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors were examined, using both an oscilloscope and a time tagger. Amélie created a measurement script to start the final measurement automatically with the computer. She then analyzed the recorded data using the Python programming language and displayed it graphically.
Amélie also saw how optical fibers are spliced in a cryostat. This allows to guide light from a laser at room temperature to the superconducting detectors at around 0.8 Kelvin.
Amélie was also given a tour of the clean room by Dr. Ronja Köthemann. There she was shown the exciting equipment that is used, for example, to produce and examine waveguide samples.
Next, she will join Prof. Jan Sperling's group (Theoretische Quantensysteme) to gain an insight into theoretical physics.
If you are interested in an internship as well, contact Dr. Sascha Hohmann.
