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Physical Review Letters

Turnstile device for heralded single photons: Coulomb blockade of electron and hole tunneling in quantum confinedp-i-nheterojunctions

Ataç İmamoğlu, Y. Yamamoto

Published Jan 10, 1994• 176 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that if a double-barrier mesoscopic p-i-n heterojunction is driven by an alternating voltage source, then Coulomb blockade and quantum confinement effects together can suppress the quantum fluctuations usually associated with electron and hole injection processes in semiconductors. It is therefore possible to generate heralded single-photon states without the need for a high-impedance current source. Since the frequency of the alternating voltage source determines the repetition rate of the single-photon states and the magnitude of the junction current, the present scheme promises high precision photon-flux and current standards.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.72.210

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We show that if a double-barrier mesoscopic p-i-n heterojunction is driven by an alternating voltage source, then Coulomb blockade and quantum confinement effects together can suppress the quantum fluctuations usually associated with electron and hole injection processes in semiconductors. It is therefore possible to generate heralded single-photon states without the need for a high-impedance current source. Since the frequency of the alternating voltage source determines the repetition rate of the single-photon states and the magnitude of the junction current, the present scheme promises high precision photon-flux and current standards.
We describe a single-photon turnstile device that is based on a double-barrier mesoscopic p-i-n heterojunction driven by an alternating voltage source. In such a semiconductor device, Coulomb blockade and quantum confinement effects together can suppress the quantum fluctuations usually associated with electron and hole injection processes. It is therefore possible to generate heralded single-photon states without the need for high-impedance current source. The present scheme promises high- precision photon-flux state and current standards, as the repetition rate of the single-photon states and the magnitude of the junction current are determined by the frequency of the alternating voltage source.
We show that the Coulomb blockade of resonant tunneling in semiconductor heterojunctions creates correlations between single-charge tunneling and single-photon emission events. When driven by a constant-current source, a mesoscopic p-i-i-i-n junction generates a regulated single-photon stream by single-electron-to-single-photon conversion. Under constant-voltage operation, the photon stream generated by the junction is antibunched and sub-Poissonian. The single-electron charging energy of the heterostructure has to exceed the width of the resonant subband and the characteristic energy of the thermal fluctuations for these correlations to be observable.
We propose a new method of generating nonclassical optical field states. The method uses a semiconductor device, which consists of a single quantum dot as active medium embedded in a p- i- n junction and surrounded by a microcavity. Resonant tunneling of electrons and holes into the quantum dot ground states, together with the Pauli exclusion principle, produce regulated single photons or regulated pairs of photons. We propose that this device also has the unique potential to generate pairs of entangled photons at a well-defined repetition rate.
Accuracy of single-electron currents produced in hybrid turnstiles at high operation frequencies is, among other errors, limited by electrons tunnelling in the wrong direction. Increasing the barrier transparency between the island and the leads, and the source-drain bias helps to suppress these events in a larger frequency range, although they lead to some additional errors. We experimentally demonstrate a driving scheme that suppresses tunnelling in the wrong direction hence extending the range of frequencies for generating accurate single-electron currents. The main feature of this approach is an additional AC signal applied to the bias with twice the frequency as the one applied to the gate electrode. This allows additional modulation of the island chemical potential. By using the new approach under certain parameters, we improve the single-electron current accuracy by one order of magnitude. Finally, we show through experimentally-contrasted calculations that our method can improve accuracy even in devices for which the usual gate driving gives errors ∼10−3\sim 10^{-3}∼10−3 at high frequencies and can bring them under 5×10−45\times 10^{-4}5×10−4.
Summary form only given. A deterministic single photon source emitting triggered (heralded) photons on demand, also termed single photon turnstile device, is one of the key elements in the emerging field of quantum information science. We present a single photon source based on pulsed laser excitation of a single self-assembled InAs quantum dot (QD) embedded in a high quality (Q) factor microcavity structure. Regulation of the photon emission process of the QD exciton ground state (1X) transition is accomplished by a combination of two effects: Coulomb interactions creating an anharmonic multiexciton spectrum and a slow relaxation of highly excited QDs leading to vanishing re-excitation probability following the photon emission event at the 1X transition.
Photon emission by tunneling electrons can be encouraged by locating a resonator close to the tunnel junction and applying an appropriate voltage bias. However, studies of normal metals show that the resonator also affects how the charges flow, facilitating processes in which correlated tunneling of two charges produces one photon. We develop a theory to analyze this kind of behavior in Josephson junctions by deriving an effective Hamiltonian describing processes where two Cooper pairs generate a single photon. We determine the conditions under which the transport is dominated by incoherent tunneling of two Cooper pairs, while also uncovering a regime of coherent double Cooper-pair tunneling. We show that the system can also display an unusual form of photon blockade and hence could serve as a single-photon source.