Workshop Overview:
This workshop will kick off a two-year technical development plan involving Caltech, JPL and a number of collaborating institutions that will substantially extend the state of the art in ultrasensitive photon detector arrays at far-infrared and near-infrared/optical wavelengths. At far-IR wavelengths, the detectors we propose to develop will approach (or exceed) single photon sensitivity. Meanwhile, in the near-IR and optical bands, we aim to demonstrate arrays of energy-resolving photon detectors that can be used to address some of the most dynamic areas in contemporary astrophysics, including searching for terrestrial exoplanets at near-IR and optical wavelengths, and, in the far-infrared, spectroscopically studying the physics of the population of distant, dusty, star-forming, optically faint but far-IR luminous galaxies that together account for half of the electromagnetic radiation produced since the Big Bang.