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Applied Physics Letters

Electrically driven telecommunication wavelength single-photon source

M. B. Ward, Tristan Farrow, Patrick See, Zhiliang L. Yuan, O. Z. Karimov, Anthony J. Bennett, Andrew J. Shields, P. Atkinson, K. Cooper, D. A. Ritchie

Published Feb 5, 2007• 72 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An electrically driven ∼1.3μm single-photon source is demonstrated. The source contains InAs quantum dots within a planar cavity light-emitting diode. Electroluminescence (EL) spectra show clear emission lines and from time resolved EL we estimate a primary decay time of ∼1ns. Time-varying Stark shifts are studied and proposed for truncating the emission in jitter-sensitive applications (optimization for 2ns detector gate width demonstrated) and for relaxing excitation pulse-length requirements. A correlation measurement demonstrates suppression of multiphoton emission to below 28% of the Poissonian level before correction for detector dark counts, suggesting g(2)(0)∼0.19 for the source itself.

DOI
10.1063/1.2472172

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An electrically driven ∼1.3μm single-photon source is demonstrated. The source contains InAs quantum dots within a planar cavity light-emitting diode. Electroluminescence (EL) spectra show clear emission lines and from time resolved EL we estimate a primary decay time of ∼1ns. Time-varying Stark shifts are studied and proposed for truncating the emission in jitter-sensitive applications (optimization for 2ns detector gate width demonstrated) and for relaxing excitation pulse-length requirements. A correlation measurement demonstrates suppression of multiphoton emission to below 28% of the Poissonian level before correction for detector dark counts, suggesting g(2)(0)∼0.19 for the source itself.
We report the realization of the first electrically-driven single photon source. The device is based on a GaAs p-i-n diode containing self-assembled InAs quantum dots embedded within the i-region. Time resolved electroluminescence from the device yields information on the radiative lifetimes of the single quantum dots involved. Applying a continuous current a dip is measured in the second-order correlation function at zero time delay indicating that the luminescence is antibunched. Under pulsed excitation by subnanosecond voltage pulses, strong suppression of multi-photon pulses is achieved with respect to a laser of the same average intensity. The results suggest that conventional semiconductor technology can be used to mass-produce a single photon source for applications in quantum information technology.
Quantum interference lies at the foundation of many protocols for scalable quantum computing and communication with linear optics. To observe these effects the light source must emit photons that are indistinguishable. From a technological standpoint, it would be beneficial to have electrical control over the emission. Here we report of an electrically driven single-photon source emitting indistinguishable photons. The device consists of a layer of InAs quantum dots embedded in the intrinsic region of a p-i-n diode. Indistinguishability of consecutive photons is tested in a two-photon interference experiment under two modes of operation, continuous and pulsed current injection. We also present a complete theory based on the interference of photons with a Lorentzian spectrum which we compare to both our continuous wave and pulsed experiments. In the former case, a visibility was measured limited only by the timing resolution of our detection system. In the case of pulsed injection, we employ a two-pulse voltage sequence which suppresses multi-photon emission and allows us to carry out temporal filtering of photons which have undergone dephasing. The characteristic Hong-Ou-Mandel 'dip' is measured, resulting in a visibility of 64 +/- 4%.
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.
A single-photon source capable of emitting indistinguishable photons is a key element in schemes for scalable quantum information processing with linear optics. Whilst several groups have reported such sources, up until now an electrically driven source capable of making these protocols technologically viable has yet to be reported. We present the first demonstration of an electrically driven single-photon source emitting indistinguishable photons. Our sample consists of a layer of InAs/GaAs quantum dots embedded in the intrinsic region of a p-i-n microcavity diode. We test the indistinguishability of consecutive photons by carrying out a Hong-Ou- Mandel-type two-photon interference experiment whereby two identical photons arriving simultaneously at two input ports of a 50:50 beamsplitter exit together. The device was operated under two modes, continuous and pulsed current injection. In the former case, we measured a coherence time of up to 400 ps at low pump current - the longest reported under these excitation conditions. A two-photon interference visibility was measured, limited only by the timing resolution of our detection system and further suggesting a 100% overlap of photon wavepackets at the output beamsplitter. In the case of pulsed injection, we employed a two-pulse voltage sequence which allowed us to carry out temporal filtering of photons which had undergone dephasing. The characteristic Hong-Ou-Mandel "dip" was measured resulting in a visibility of 64 ± 4%.
We have demonstrated highly pure single-photon emissions from an InAs/InP quantum dot at the wavelength of 1.5 μm. By applying quasi-resonant excitation, one exciton is deterministically generated in an excited state, which then relaxes to the exciton ground state before recombining to emit a single photon. The photon-correlation function of the emission from the exciton ground state exhibits a record g(2)(0) value of (4.4 ± 0.2) × 10−4 measured using high-performance super-conducting single-photon detectors, without any background subtraction. This single-photon source with extremely low multi-photon emission probability paves the way to realize long distance quantum key distribution and low error-rate quantum computation.
The recently demonstrated electroluminescence of color centers in diamond makes them one of the best candidates for room temperature single-photon sources.However, the reported emission rates are far off what can be achieved by state-of-the-art electrically driven epitaxial quantum dots.Since the electroluminescence mechanism has not yet been elucidated, it is not clear to what extent the emission rate can be increased.Here we develop a theoretical framework to study single-photon emission from color centers in diamond under electrical pumping.The proposed model comprises electron and hole trapping and releasing, transitions between the ground and excited states of the color center as well as structural transformations of the center due to carrier trapping.It provides the possibility to predict both the photon emission rate and the wavelength of emitted photons.Self-consistent numerical simulations of the single-photon emitting diode based on the proposed model show that the photon emission rate can be as high as 100 kcounts s -1 at standard conditions.In contrast to most optoelectronic devices, the emission rate steadily increases with the device temperature achieving of more than 100 Mcount s -1 at 500 K, which is highly advantageous for practical applications.These results demonstrate the potential of color centers in diamond as electrically driven non-classical light emitters and provide a foundation for the design and development of single-photon sources for optical quantum computation and quantum communication networks operating at room and higher temperatures.