Researchers: Tom van der Reep, Yair Pinto (UvA)

Only recently, it has become possible to make quantum light pulses that contain exactly one photon, while a candle emits around a billion billion photons per second. With this new quantum light, we aim to investigate if humans can consciously perceive single visible photons, a question that has fascinated psychophysicists for more than a century. There are experimental indications that it might be possible, but the statistics is not yet rock-solid. Further, we want to explore if such smallest excitations are useful in neuroscience; single photon human vision might be a nice tool to study signal pathways in the brain.

In a very nice article, Michelle Willebrands has written about our research: In dutch, Kunnen mensen een enkel lichtdeeltje waarnemen?, or in english, Can humans observe a single particle of light?.

We have published a theoretical analysis of using “quantum detector tomography” to explore single-photon human vision:

Direct measurement of darkness using a standard single-photon avalanche photodiode
T. H. A. van der Reep, D. Molenaar, W. Löffler
arXiv:2410.06691