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Optical Engineering

Metrology of single-photon sources and detectors: a review

Christopher J. Chunnilall, Ivo Pietro Degiovanni, S. Kück, Ingmar Müller, Alastair G. Sinclair

Published Jul 10, 2014• 178 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The generation, measurement, and manipulation of light at the single- and few-photon levels underpin a rapidly expanding range of applications. These range from applications moving into the few-photon regime in order to achieve improved sensitivity and/or energy efficiency, as well as new applications that operate solely in this regime, such as quantum key distribution and physical quantum random number generation. There is intensive research to develop new quantum optical technologies, for example, quantum sensing, simulation, and computing. These applications rely on the performance of the single-photon sources and detectors they employ; this review article gives an overview of the methods, both conventional and recently developed, that are available for measuring the performance of these devices, with traceability to the SI system.

DOI
10.1117/1.oe.53.8.081910

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Quantum optical information technologies such as key distribution systems for secure communications, which are based on the discrete and quantum properties of photons, are now commercial products. Market take-up of these and other developing quantum technologies will be compromised unless there are traceable measurements to validate the performance of these devices. We highlight some ongoing collaborative research that will provide the required high accuracy techniques for the few and single photon regime, including operation at telecom wavelengths.
This review surveys the physical principles and recent developments in manufacturing single-photon sources. Special emphasis is placed on important potential applications such as linear optical quantum computing (LOQC), quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum metrology that drive the development of these sources of single photons. We discuss the quantum-mechanical properties of light prepared in a quantum state of definite photon number and compare it with coherent light that shows a Poissonian distribution of photon numbers. We examine how the single-photon fidelity directly influences the ability to transmit secure quantum bits over a predefined distance. The theoretical description of modified spontaneous decay, the main principle behind single-photon generation, provides the background for many experimental implementations such as those using microresonators or pillar microcavities. The main alternative way to generate single photons using postselection of entangled photon pairs from parametric down-conversion, will be discussed. We concentrate on describing the underlying physical principles and we will point out limitations and open problems associated with single-photon production.
Quantum photonics technologies have realized great advancements over the past decade. Quantum photonic integrated circuits, devices which incorporate single-photon emitters, detectors and optical components on a single device, are already being implemented in quantum computing and networking hardware. The verification and validation of system performance, including the characterization of single-photon sources and the efficiency of single-photon detectors is an ongoing challenge, especially for integrated devices. One approach to characterizing a single-photon source is to measure the optical power of the emitted photons, which can be applied in turn to the characterization of on-chip components within an integrated quantum photonics platform. This presentation will address the development of metrological devices and measurement techniques, where an ultra-sensitive radiometer chip directly measures the optical power of photons emitted from a quantum dot single-photon source. This measurement technique demonstrates the feasibility of implementing optical power measurements of on-demand single photon sources in the verification and validation of quantum photonics systems.