Tailored single photons

Axel Kuhn

Björn Jonas, Dirk Heinze, Eva Schöll +8 more

Tailored nanoscale quantum light sources, matching the specific needs of use cases, are crucial building blocks for photonic quantum technologies. Several different approaches to realize solid-state quantum emitters with high performance have been pursued and different concepts for energy tuning have been established. However, the properties of the emitted photons are always defined by the individual quantum emitter and can therefore not be controlled with full flexibility. Here we introduce an all-optical nonlinear method to tailor and control the single photon emission. We demonstrate a laser-controlled down-conversion process from an excited state of a semiconductor quantum three-level system. Based on this concept, we realize energy tuning and polarization control of the single photon emission with a control-laser field. Our results mark an important step towards tailored single photon emission from a photonic quantum system based on quantum optical principles.

Andreas Ahlrichs, Tim Kroh, Chris Müller +2 more

We introduce components for future quantum hybrid networks. A tailored narrow-band photon pair source, tunable emission of Fourier-limited photons from a quantum dot, and single photon frequency conversion to the telecom C-band are demonstrated.

M. Bertolotti

Alan L. Migdall, David A. Branning, Stefania Castelletto

As typically implemented, single-photon sources cannot be made to produce single photons with high probability, while simultaneously suppressing the probability of yielding two or more photons. Because of this, single-photon sources cannot really produce single photons on demand. We describe a multiplexed system that allows the probabilities of producing one and more photons to be adjusted independently, enabling a much better approximation of a source of single photons on demand.

Barry C. Sanders, Jelena Vuckovic A, Philippe Grangier