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arXiv:1306.5801 · Scientific Reports

Two-photon interference between disparate sources for quantum networking

Alex R. McMillan, Laurent Labonté, Alex S. Clark, B. Bell, Olivier Alibart, Anthony Martin, W. J. Wadsworth, Sébastien Tanzilli, John Rarity

Published Jun 20, 2013• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum networks involve entanglement sharing between multiple users. Ideally, any two users would be able to connect regardless of the type of photon source they employ, provided they fulfill the requirements for two-photon interference. From a theoretical perspective, photons coming from different origins can interfere with a perfect visibility, provided they are made indistinguishable in all degrees of freedom. Previous experimental demonstrations of such a scenario have been limited to photon wavelengths below 900 nm, unsuitable for long distance communication, and suffered from low interference visibility. We report two-photon interference using two disparate heralded single photon sources, which involve different nonlinear effects, operating in the telecom wavelength range. The measured visibility of the two-photon interference is 80 ± 4%, which paves the way to hybrid universal quantum networks.

DOI
10.1038/srep02032

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Quantum networks involve entanglement sharing between multiple users. Ideally, any two users would be able to connect regardless of the type of photon source they employ, provided they fulfill the requirements for two-photon interference. From a theoretical perspective, photons coming from different origins can interfere with a perfect visibility, provided they are made indistinguishable in all degrees of freedom. Previous experimental demonstrations of such a scenario have been limited to photon wavelengths below 900 nm, unsuitable for long distance communication, and suffered from low interference visibility. We report two-photon interference using two disparate heralded single photon sources, which involve different nonlinear effects, operating in the telecom wavelength range. The measured visibility of the two-photon interference is 80 ± 4%, which paves the way to hybrid universal quantum networks.
Abstract The interference between two independent photons stands as a crucial aspect of numerous quantum information protocols and technologies. In this work, we leverage fiber-coupled devices, which encompass fibered photon pair-sources and off-the-shelf optics, to demonstrate Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. We employ two distinct single photon sources, namely a heralded single-photon source and a weak coherent laser source, both operating asynchronously in continuous-wave regime. We record two-photon coincidences, showing a state-of-art visibility of 91.9(5)%. This work, compliant with telecom technology, provides realistic backbones for establishing long-range communication based on quantum teleportation in hybrid quantum networks.
Long-distance quantum communication relies on the ability to efficiently generate and prepare single photons at telecom wavelengths. In many applications these photons must also be indistinguishable such that they exhibit interference on a beamsplitter, which implements effective photon-photon interactions. However, deterministic generation of indistinguishable single photons with high brightness remains a challenging problem. We demonstrate two-photon interference at telecom wavelengths using an InAs/InP quantum dot in a nanophotonic cavity. The cavity enhances the quantum dot emission, resulting in a nearly Gaussian transverse mode profile with high out-coupling efficiency exceeding 36% after multi-photon correction. We also observe Purcell enhanced spontaneous emission rate up to 4. Using this source, we generate linearly polarized, high purity single photons at 1.3 micron wavelength and demonstrate the indistinguishable nature of the emission using a two-photon interference measurement, which exhibits indistinguishable visibilities of 18% without post-selection and 67% with post-selection. Our results provide a promising approach to generate bright, deterministic single photons at telecom wavelength for applications in quantum networking and quantum communication.
Practical quantum communication between remote quantum memories rely on single photons at telecom wavelengths. Although spin-photon entanglement has been demonstrated in atomic and solid-state qubit systems, the produced single photons at short wavelengths and with polarization encoding are not suitable for long-distance communication, because they suffer from high propagation loss and depolarization in optical fibres. Establishing entanglement between remote quantum nodes would further require the photons generated from separate nodes to be indistinguishable. Here, we report the observation of correlations between a quantum-dot spin and a telecom single photon across a 2-km fibre channel based on time-bin encoding and background-free frequency downconversion. The downconverted photon at telecom wavelengths exhibits two-photon interference with another photon from an independent source, achieving a mean wavepacket overlap of greater than 0.89 despite their original wavelength mismatch (900 and 911 nm). The quantum-networking operations that we demonstrate will enable practical communication between solid-state spin qubits across long distances.
Abstract Hybrid quantum systems play a crucial role in advancing scalable and versatile quantum networks as they combine the strengths of different quantum platforms. An important challenge for the development of hybrid quantum networks lies in interfacing heterogeneous quantum nodes and distributing entanglement among them. Single photons emitted from these dissimilar quantum nodes typically show distinct spectral and temporal properties. Therefore, they necessitate spectral filtering and temporal synchronization, which introduce significant photon losses and require additional resources. In this work, we successfully generate indistinguishable photons from two distinct quantum systems of a warm atomic ensemble and a solid-state quantum dot. Remarkably, quantum interference between dissimilar sources is achieved without additional spectral filtering and time synchronization, which enables autonomous quantum nodes for a hybrid quantum network. 133Cs atomic ensemble can efficiently generate heralded single photons at the wavelength of 917 nm of the 6P_(3/2)-6D_(5/2) transition, while the single photons emitted from an InAs/GaAs quantum dot can be tuned to match the 133Cs transition wavelength. Our dense warm atomic ensemble and cavity-coupled quantum dot can efficiently generate bright and resonant single photons at detection rates approaching MHz, respectively. More importantly, these single photons exhibit inherent spectral similarities not only in the wavelength but also in the spectral linewidth, achieving a high spectral overlap of 0.92. Such intrinsic compatibility between dissimilar quantum sources is essential to leverage the advantages of different quantum platforms, paving the way toward a large-scale and functional hybrid quantum network.
We present an all-optical method for synchronizing remote quantum network stations dedicated to the generation or the storage of photonic entanglement. We apply our method to the connection of two sources emitting pairs of photons at telecom wavelengths. Our experimental setup is based on a pulsed telecom fiber laser operating at 2.5 GHz that pumps, after frequency doubling, two nonlinear waveguide photon-pair sources. Our synchronization scheme is validated via the implementation of a two-photon interference experiment performed at the relay station, i.e. where the Bell state measurement takes place. We show a raw visibility greater than 90%, obtained in the 4-fold coincidence counts, for a separation distance of 100 km between the photon- pair sources. This result demonstrates the relevance of our approach.
The interference of photons emitted by dissimilar sources is an essential requirement for a wide range of photonic quantum information applications. Many of these applications are in quantum communications and need to operate at standard telecommunication wavelengths to minimize the impact of photon losses and be compatible with existing infrastructure. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the quantum interference of telecom-wavelength photons from an InAs/GaAs quantum dot single-photon source and a laser; an important step towards such applications. The results are in good agreement with a theoretical model, indicating a high degree of indistinguishability for the interfering photons.