No Arabic abstract
As single-photon sources become more mature and are used more often in quantum information, communications and measurement applications, their characterization becomes more important. Single-photon-like light is often characterized by its brightness, and two quantum properties: the single-photon composition and the photon indistinguishability. While it is desirable to obtain these quantities from a single measurement, currently two or more measurements are required. Here, we simultaneously determine the brightness, the single photon purity, the indistinguishability, and the statistical distribution of Fock states to third order for a quantum light source. The measurement uses a pair of two-photon (n = 2) number-resolving detectors. n > 2 number-resolving detectors provide no additional advantage in the single-photon characterization. The new method extracts more information per experimental trial than a conventional measurement for all input states, and is particularly more e cient for statistical mixtures of photon states. Thus, using this n=2, number- resolving detector scheme will provide advantages in a variety of quantum optics measurements and systems.
Quantum repeaters are critical components for distributing entanglement over long distances in presence of unavoidable optical losses during transmission. Stimulated by Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller protocol, many improved quantum-repeater protocols based on quantum memories have been proposed, which commonly focus on the entanglement-distribution rate. Among these protocols, the elimination of multi-photons (multi-photon-pairs) and the use of multimode quantum memory are demonstrated to have the ability to greatly improve the entanglement-distribution rate. Here, we demonstrate the storage of deterministic single photons emitted from a quantum dot in a polarization-maintaining solid-state quantum memory; in addition, multi-temporal-mode memory with $1$, $20$ and $100$ narrow single-photon pulses is also demonstrated. Multi-photons are eliminated, and only one photon at most is contained in each pulse. Moreover, the solid-state properties of both sub-systems make this configuration more stable and easier to be scalable. Our work will be helpful in the construction of efficient quantum repeaters based on all-solid-state devices
Global quantum secure communication can be achieved using quantum key distribution (QKD) with orbiting satellites. Established techniques use attenuated lasers as weak coherent pulse (WCP) sources, with so-called decoy-state protocols, to generate the required single-photon-level pulses. While such approaches are elegant, they come at the expense of attainable final key due to inherent multi-photon emission, thereby constraining secure key generation over the high-loss, noisy channels expected for satellite transmissions. In this work we improve on this limitation by using true single-photon pulses generated from a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) embedded in a nanowire, possessing low multi-photon emission ($<10^{-6}$) and an extraction system efficiency of -15 dB (or 3.1%). Despite the limited efficiency, the key generated by the QD source is greater than that generated by a WCP source under identical repetition rate and link conditions representative of a satellite pass. We predict that with realistic improvements of the QD extraction efficiency to -4.0 dB (or 40%), the quantum-dot QKD protocol outperforms WCP-decoy-state QKD by almost an order of magnitude. Consequently, a QD source could allow generation of a secure key in conditions where a WCP source would simply fail, such as in the case of high channel losses. Our demonstration is the first specific use case that shows a clear benefit for QD-based single-photon sources in secure quantum communication, and has the potential to enhance the viability and efficiency of satellite-based QKD networks.
We propose methods for realization of continuous two photon source using coherently pumped quantum dot embedded inside a photonic crystal cavity. We analyze steady state population in quantum dot energy levels and field inside the cavity mode. We find conditions for population inversion in coherently pumped and incoherently pumped quantum dot. We show that squeezing in the output for two two photon laser is not visible using coherent as well as incoherent pump. We discuss effect of phonon coupling using recently developed polaron transformed master equation at low temperatures. We also propose scheme for generating squeezed state of field using four wave mixing.
We present a semiconductor master equation technique to study the input/output characteristics of coherent photon transport in a semiconductor waveguide-cavity system containing a single quantum dot. We use this approach to investigate the effects of photon propagation and anharmonic cavity-QED for various dot-cavity interaction strengths, including weakly-coupled, intermediately-coupled, and strongly-coupled regimes. We demonstrate that for mean photon numbers much less than 0.1, the commonly adopted weak excitation (single quantum) approximation breaks down, even in the weak coupling regime. As a measure of the anharmonic multiphoton-correlations, we compute the Fano factor and the correlation error associated with making a semiclassical approximation. We also explore the role of electron--acoustic-phonon scattering and find that phonon-mediated scattering plays a qualitatively important role on the light propagation characteristics. As an application of the theory, we simulate a conditional phase gate at a phonon bath temperature of $20 $K in the strong coupling regime.
We demonstrate, both numerically and analytically, that it is possible to generate two photons from one and only one photon. We characterize the output two photon field and make our calculations close to reality by including losses. Our proposal relies on real or artificial three-level atoms with a cyclic transition strongly coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. We show that close to perfect downconversion with efficiency over 99% is reachable using state-of-the-art Waveguide QED architectures such as photonic crystals or superconducting circuits. In particular, we sketch an implementation in circuit QED, where the three level atom is a transmon.