Abstract
We describe and model a non-cryogenic optical detector designed to count incident photons with metrological accuracy. Our design consists of a semiconductor device operating at -10 °C and is predicted to resolve pulses of up to 10 photons with an error rate of 2% in the input number of photons. We present an estimate of the overall device performance using a combination of estimates and simulations of optical loss, discrete electron loss and noise, and electronic noise.