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Adam McCaughan headshot, male, light brown hair, beard, glasses, smile.

Adam McCaughan

Physicist, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Contents

Education

  • Ph.D. (2015) • Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • M.Eng. (2010) • Electrical Engineering • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • B.S. (2009) • Electrical Engineering • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Current Position

  • Physicist, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Applied Physics Division, Boulder, CO
  • Developing superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors in the ultraviolet, designing architectures for megapixel-scale array.

Two pictures overlapped. In the bottom left picture, a microscope picture of a silicon chip with a blueish green tint and wiring on it. Overlaid over the silicon chip is a some data in the form of a 3D histogram that has a large central hump, representing the arrival of photons in a gaussian-distributed area at the center of the camera. On the upper right pictures, a black and white scanning electron micrograph showing a highly zoomed image of a nanowire structure. The nanowire structure shows white pads on the top of bottom, with a set of horizontal wires that meander back and forth between the top. The scale bars are on the order of 2 micrometers.
Bottom left: a microscope picture of a silicon chip. Overlaid is a 3D histogram representing the arrival of photons in a gaussian-distributed area at the center of the camera. Upper right: a scanning electron micrograph showing a zoomed image of a nanowire structure.

Technology Interests

  • Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors
  • Electrothermal nanowire electronics for amplification and readout of superconducting signals
  • Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes
  • Machine learning and optimization frameworks

Goals and Aspirations

  • Creation of a multi-megapixel single photon detector array that has near-unity efficiency and fill factor
  • Integrating carbon-nanotube absorbers with SNSPDS to create broadband single-photon detectors.
  • Increasing the operating temperature of SNSPDs to ease space flight requirements

A microscope image of a rectangular chip, showing the different parts of the superconducting camera, including imaging area and ancillary electronics. The chip has a colorful patina, with hues of yellow on the left, red in the center, and blue on the right.
A microscope image of a rectangular chip, showing the different parts of the superconducting camera, including imaging area and ancillary electronics.