Direct detection of a single photon by humans
Open Access
- 19 July 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 7 (1), 12172
- https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12172
Abstract
Despite investigations for over 70 years, the absolute limits of human vision have remained unclear. Rod cells respond to individual photons, yet whether a single-photon incident on the eye can be perceived by a human subject has remained a fundamental open question. Here we report that humans can detect a single-photon incident on the cornea with a probability significantly above chance. This was achieved by implementing a combination of a psychophysics procedure with a quantum light source that can generate single-photon states of light. We further discover that the probability of reporting a single photon is modulated by the presence of an earlier photon, suggesting a priming process that temporarily enhances the effective gain of the visual system on the timescale of seconds.This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
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