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arXiv:1208.2296 · Scientific Reports

Improving the performance of bright quantum dot single photon sources using temporal filtering via amplitude modulation

Serkan Ateş, Imad H. Agha, Angelo Gulinatti, Ivan Rech, A. Badolato, Kartik A. Srinivasan

Published Mar 7, 2013• 52 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Single epitaxially-grown semiconductor quantum dots have great potential as single photon sources for photonic quantum technologies, though in practice devices often exhibit nonideal behavior. Here, we demonstrate that amplitude modulation can improve the performance of quantum-dot-based sources. Starting with a bright source consisting of a single quantum dot in a fiber-coupled microdisk cavity, we use synchronized amplitude modulation to temporally filter the emitted light. We observe that the single photon purity, temporal overlap between successive emission events, and indistinguishability can be greatly improved with this technique. As this method can be applied to any triggered single photon source, independent of geometry and after device fabrication, it is a flexible approach to improve the performance of systems based on single solid-state quantum emitters, which often suffer from excess dephasing and multi-photon background emission.

DOI
10.1038/srep01397

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Single epitaxially-grown semiconductor quantum dots have great potential as single photon sources for photonic quantum technologies, though in practice devices often exhibit nonideal behavior. Here, we demonstrate that amplitude modulation can improve the performance of quantum-dot-based sources. Starting with a bright source consisting of a single quantum dot in a fiber-coupled microdisk cavity, we use synchronized amplitude modulation to temporally filter the emitted light. We observe that the single photon purity, temporal overlap between successive emission events, and indistinguishability can be greatly improved with this technique. As this method can be applied to any triggered single photon source, independent of geometry and after device fabrication, it is a flexible approach to improve the performance of systems based on single solid-state quantum emitters, which often suffer from excess dephasing and multi-photon background emission.
In the pursuit of developing a quantum information network, photons appear to be the most convenient carriers to interconnect distant ports. The need to get on-demand single photons that is one and only one photon, with a high reliability, is the main driving force for the development of bright solid-state sources. One important parameter is the brightness defined as the probability that one collected pulse contains a single photon. For some applications like quantum information processing or long distance quantum communications, the emitted single photons must be also indistinguishable, so that can make use of their quantum interference to implement effective photon-photon interactions. To reach the ideal source of single and indistinguishable photons, different systems are explored : defects in diamond (NV centers), trapped atoms or ions, single molecules or semiconductor quantum dots.By coupling a semiconductor quantum dot to an optical cavity, the spontaneous emission of the emitter can be modified to obtain bright single-photon sources. An innovative technique was developed by Pr. Pascale Senellart and her team at the Laboratory of Photonics and Nanostructures (LPN) from CNRS that allows making such sources in a very reproducible way.This work explores the performance of single quantum dot coupled to micropillars. Various techniques are used in order to increase the single photon purity and indistinguishability while keeping a high source brightness. First, the cavity was modified using an adiabatic architecture such that a strong acceleration of the spontaneous emission was implemented. Then, a technique to apply an electric bias on the micropillars has been developed. The combination of the electric bias with a resonant optical excitation of the quantum dot allows to generation purely indistinguishable photons with a high brightness.The results developed in this thesis open a vast field of novel applications in quantum technologies, from quantum cryptography, metrology to quantum imaging.
Efficient, high rate photon sources with high single-photon purity are essential ingredients for quantum technologies. Single-photon sources based on solid state emitters such as quantum dots are very advantageous for integrated photonic circuits, but they can suffer from a high two-photon emission probability, which in cases of noncryogenic environment cannot be spectrally filtered. Here we propose two temporal purification-by-heralding methods for using a two-photon emission process to yield highly pure and efficient single-photon emission, bypassing the inherent problem of spectrally overlapping biphoton emission at elevated temperatures. We experimentally emulate their feasibility on the emission from a single nanocrystal quantum dot at room temperature, exhibiting single-photon purities exceeding 99.5%, without a significant loss of single-photon efficiency. By utilizing these methods with commercially available components, nanocrystal quantum dots can be made realistic high-quality room-temperature sources for single photons. These approaches can also be applied for any indeterministic source of spectrally broadband photon pairs.
Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) coupled with optical microcavities provide an excellent platform for generating high-performance single-photon sources. However, the current microcavity structures are difficult to solve the tradeoff between single-photon purity and indistinguishability without additional filtering, due to challenges in suppressing broad phonon sideband spectrum and two-photon emission in the practical experiments. To address these issues, we have developed a novel asymmetric microcavity that supports two nondegenerate polarized modes, both resonant with a single quantum dot. One cavity mode is broadband and is used for excitation to reduce two-photon emission intensity, while the other is narrowband and is used for collection to enhance the indistinguishability of single-photon sources. This asymmetric microcavity also has the ability to overcome at least half of the photon efficiency loss under polarization filtering. Moreover, our model has employed an excitation pulse that resonates with cavity modes eliminating spectral distortion of intracavity fields, and efficiently achieving deterministic population inversion of QDs compared to an elliptical cavity. Our scheme paves the way to develop the excellent performance single-photon sources with higher brightness, near-unity purity, and indistinguishability without any additional filtering in practical experiments.
Quantum light and in particular single photons have become essential resources for a growing number of quantum applications including quantum computing, quantum key distribution and quantum metrology. Solid-state atomlike systems such as semiconductor quantum dots and color defects in crystals have become the hallmark of highly pure single photon emitters in the past two decades. A particular interest has been developed in nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) and color centers in diamond as potential compact room-temperature emitters. There are however several challenges that inhibit the use of such sources in current technologies including low photon extraction efficiency, low emission rates and relatively low single photon purities. In this work we will review our efforts in overcoming these technical difficulties using several complementary methods including designing several nanoantenna devices that enhance the directionality and emission rate of the nanoemitter. In addition, we developed several temporal heralding techniques to overcome the hurdle of low single photon purity in NQDs in an effort to produce a highly pure, bright and efficient single photon source on-chip.
On demand single-photon and entangled-photon sources are key building-blocks for many proposed photonic quantum technologies. For practical device applications, epitaxially grown quantum dots (QDs) are of increasing importance due to their bright photon emission with sharp line width. Particularly, they are solid-state systems and can be easily embedded within a light-emitting diode (LED) to achieve electrically driven sources. Therefore, one would expect a full-fledged optoelectronic quantum network that is running on macroscopically separated, QD-based single- and entangled-photon devices. An all-electrically operated wavelength-tunable on demand single-photon source (SPS) is demonstrated first. The device consists of a LED in the form of self-assembled InGaAs QDs containing nanomembrane integrated onto a piezoelectric crystal. Triggered single photons are generated via injection of ultra-short electrical pulses into the diode, while their energy can be precisely tuned over a broad range of about 4.8 meV by varying the voltage applied to the piezoelectric crystal. High speed operation of this single-photon emitting diode up to 0.8 GHz is demonstrated. In the second part of this thesis, a fast strain-tunable entangled-light-emitting diode (ELED) is demonstrated. It has been shown that the fine structure splitting of the exciton can be effectively overcome by employing a specific anisotropic strain field. By injecting ultra-fast electrical pulses to the diode, electrically triggered entangled-photon emission with high degree of entanglement is successfully realized. A statistical investigation reveals that more than 30% of the QDs in the strain-tunable quantum LED emit polarization-entangled photon-pairs with entanglement-fidelities up to f+ = 0.83(5). Driven at the highest operation speed ever reported so far (400 MHz), the strain-tunable quantum LED emerges as unique devices for high-data rate entangled-photon applications. In the end of this thesis, on demand and wavelength-tunable LH single-photon emission from strain engineered GaAs QDs is demonstrated. Fourier-transform spectroscopy is performed, from which the coherence time of the LH single-photon emission is studied. It is envisioned that this new type of LH exciton-based SPS can be applied to realize an all-semiconductor based quantum interface in the foreseeable distributed quantum networks.