No Arabic abstract
Generation of heralded single photons has recently been demonstrated using spontaneous four-wave mixing in integrated microresonators. While the results of coincidence measurements on the generated photon pairs from these systems show promise for their utility in heralding applications, such measurements do not reveal all of the effects of photon losses within the resonator. These effects, which include a significant degradation of the heralding efficiency, depend strongly on the relative strengths of the coupling of the ring modes to loss modes and channel modes. We show that the common choice of critical coupling does not optimize the rate of successfully heralded photons, and derive the coupling condition needed to do so, as well as the condition needed to maximize the rate of coincidence counts. Optimizing these rates has a considerable negative effect on the heralding efficiency.
Single photons are of paramount importance to future quantum technologies, including quantum communication and computation. Nonlinear photonic devices using parametric processes offer a straightforward route to generating photons, however additional nonlinear processes may come into play and interfere with these sources. Here we analyse these sources in the presence of multi-photon processes for the first time. We conduct experiments in silicon and gallium indium phosphide photonic crystal waveguides which display inherently different nonlinear absorption processes, namely two-photon (TPA) and three-photon absorption (ThPA), respectively. We develop a novel model capturing these diverse effects which is in excellent quantitative agreement with measurements of brightness, coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) and second-order correlation function g(2)(0), showing that TPA imposes an intrinsic limit on heralded single photon sources. We devise a new figure of merit, the quantum utility (QMU), enabling direct comparison and optimisation of single photon sources.
Single-photon sources (SPSs) are mainly characterized by the minimum value of their second-order coherence function, viz. their $g^{(2)}$ function. A precise measurement of $g^{(2)}$ may, however, require high time-resolution devices, in whose absence, only time-averaged measurements are accessible. These time-averaged measures, standing alone, do not carry sufficient information for proper characterization of SPSs. Here, we develop a theory, corroborated by an experiment, that allows us to scrutinize the coherence properties of heralded SPSs that rely on continuous-wave parametric down-conversion. Our proposed measures and analysis enable proper standardization of such SPSs.
Single photon source represent a fundamental building block for optical implementations of quantum information tasks ranging from basic tests of quantum physics to quantum communication and high-resolution quantum measurement. In this paper we investigate the performance of a multiplexed system based on asymmetric configuration of multiple heralded single photon sources. {To compare the effectiveness of different designs we introduce a single-photon source performance index that is based on the value of single photon probability required to achieve a guaranteed signal to noise ratio.} The performance and scalability comparison with both currently existing multiple-source architectures and faint laser configurations reveals an advantage the proposed scheme offers in realistic scenarios. This analysis also provides insights on the potential of using such architectures for integrated implementation.
The non-deterministic nature of photon sources is a key limitation for single photon quantum processors. Spatial multiplexing overcomes this by enhancing the heralded single photon yield without enhancing the output noise. Here the intrinsic statistical limit of an individual source is surpassed by spatially multiplexing two monolithic silicon correlated photon pair sources, demonstrating a 62.4% increase in the heralded single photon output without an increase in unwanted multi-pair generation. We further demonstrate the scalability of this scheme by multiplexing photons generated in two waveguides pumped via an integrated coupler with a 63.1% increase in the heralded photon rate. This demonstration paves the way for a scalable architecture for multiplexing many photon sources in a compact integrated platform and achieving efficient two photon interference, required at the core of optical quantum computing and quantum communication protocols.
The ability to generate complex optical photon states involving entanglement between multiple optical modes is not only critical to advancing our understanding of quantum mechanics but will play a key role in generating many applications in quantum technologies. These include quantum communications, computation, imaging, microscopy and many other novel technologies that are constantly being proposed. However, approaches to generating parallel multiple, customisable bi- and multi-entangled quantum bits (qubits) on a chip are still in the early stages of development. Here, we review recent developments in the realisation of integrated sources of photonic quantum states, focusing on approaches based on nonlinear optics that are compatible with contemporary optical fibre telecommunications and quantum memory infrastructures as well as with chip-scale semiconductor technology. These new and exciting platforms hold the promise of compact, low-cost, scalable and practical implementations of sources for the generation and manipulation of complex quantum optical states on a chip, which will play a major role in bringing quantum technologies out of the laboratory and into the real world.