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Optics Express

Indistinguishable heralded single photon generation via relative temporal multiplexing of two sources

X. Zhang, Y. H. Lee, Bryn A. Bell, Philip H. W. Leong, Terry Rudolph, Benjamin J. Eggleton, Chunle Xiong

Published Oct 11, 2017• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Generating N single photons simultaneously is a formidable challenge due to the lack of deterministic single photon sources. Recent work [New J. Phys. 19, 063013 (2017] has proposed a relative multiplexing scheme that can enhance the N single photons probability with a minimum of active switching resources. We experimentally demonstrate relative temporal multiplexing on two photon sources with a 90% additional enhancement over the standard temporal multiplexing scheme demonstrated previously. 88 ± 11% visibility of Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference verifies the indistinguishability of the heralded single photons after the synchronization. This proof-of-principle demonstration points out the potential significance of the relative multiplexing scheme for large-scale photonic quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1364/oe.25.026067

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Generating N single photons simultaneously is a formidable challenge due to the lack of deterministic single photon sources. Recent work [New J. Phys. 19, 063013 (2017] has proposed a relative multiplexing scheme that can enhance the N single photons probability with a minimum of active switching resources. We experimentally demonstrate relative temporal multiplexing on two photon sources with a 90% additional enhancement over the standard temporal multiplexing scheme demonstrated previously. 88 ± 11% visibility of Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference verifies the indistinguishability of the heralded single photons after the synchronization. This proof-of-principle demonstration points out the potential significance of the relative multiplexing scheme for large-scale photonic quantum information processing.
Interference between single photons lies at the heart of linear optical quantum computing (LOQC). However, the lack of deterministic single photon sources hinders the large-scale experimental demonstration and its practical applications, as the probability to generate N single photons simultaneously (denoted by N-photon hereafter) decreases exponentially with the increasing number of single photon sources [1]. Multiplexing is the leading proposal to overcome this challenge by relocating single photon from different modes to one fixed mode. The theoretical work [2] indicates that the relative time multiplexing (RMUX) scheme could significantly enhance this probability and meanwhile reduce the requirements of multiplexing system, such as switching speed and system complexity. In this paper, RMUX of two heralded single photon sources is demonstrated for the first time. We observe around 90% enhancement on the heralded photon pair rate, compared to the standard time multiplexing (SMUX) scheme [3].
It is a fundamental challenge in quantum optics to deterministically generate indistinguishable single photons through non-deterministic nonlinear optical processes, due to the intrinsic coupling of single- and multi-photon-generation probabilities in these processes. Actively multiplexing photons generated in many temporal modes can decouple these probabilities, but key issues are to minimize resource requirements to allow scalability, and to ensure indistinguishability of the generated photons. Here we demonstrate the multiplexing of photons from four temporal modes solely using fibre-integrated optics and off-the-shelf electronic components. We show a 100% enhancement to the single-photon output probability without introducing additional multi-photon noise. Photon indistinguishability is confirmed by a fourfold Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference with a 91 ± 16% visibility after subtracting multi-photon noise due to high pump power. Our demonstration paves the way for scalable multiplexing of many non-deterministic photon sources to a single near-deterministic source, which will be of benefit to future quantum photonic technologies.
Practical quantum photonic applications require on-demand single photon sources. As one possible solution, active temporal and wavelength multiplexing has been proposed to build an on-demand single photon source. In this scheme, heralded single photons are generated from different pump wavelengths in many temporal modes. However, the indistinguishability of these heralded single photons has not yet been experimentally confirmed. In this work, we achieve 88% ± 8% Hong–Ou–Mandel quantum interference visibility from heralded single photons generated from two separate silicon nanowires pumped at different wavelengths. This demonstrates that active temporal and wavelength multiplexing could generate indistinguishable heralded single photons.
Photonic qubits constitute a leading platform to disruptive quantum technologies due to their unique low-noise properties. The cost of the photonic approach is the non-deterministic nature of many of the processes, including single-photon generation, which arises from parametric sources and negligible interaction between photons. Active temporal multiplexing - repeating a generation process in time and rerouting to single modes using an optical switching network - is a promising approach to overcome this challenge and will likely be essential for large-scale applications with greatly reduced resource complexity and system sizes. Requirements include the precise synchronization of a system of low-loss switches, delay lines, fast photon detectors, and feed-forward. Here we demonstrate temporal multiplexing of 8 'bins' from a double-passed heralded photon source and observe an increase in the heralding and heralded photon rates. This system points the way to harnessing temporal multiplexing in quantum technologies, from single-photon sources to large-scale computation.
An on-demand single-photon source is a fundamental building block in quantum science and technology. We experimentally demonstrate the proof of concept for a scheme to generate on-demand single photons via actively multiplexing several heralded photons probabilistically produced from pulsed spontaneous parametric down-conversions (SPDCs). By utilizing a four-photon-pair source, an active feed-forward technique, and an ultrafast single-photon router, we show a fourfold enhancement of the output photon rate. Simultaneously, we maintain the quality of the output single-photon states, confirmed by correlation measurements. We also experimentally verify, via Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, that the router does not affect the indistinguishability of the single photons. Furthermore, we give numerical simulations, which indicate that photons based on multiplexing of four SPDC sources can outperform the heralding based on highly advanced photon-number-resolving detectors. Our results show a route for on-demand single-photon generation and the practical realization of scalable linear optical quantum-information processing.
Scalable quantum photonic technologies require the simultaneous production of highly indistinguishable multi-photon states with high probability. This need may be met, and the output probability significantly increased by multiplexed sources, which channel numerous low-probability heralded single-photon sources into a specified output mode using time or spatial multiplexing. However, conventional methods merely replicate these multiplexing units when scaled to multiple output modes, which is fundamentally inefficient because it discards many valid multi-photon events. To address this, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel multiplexing source architecture based on a multi-input/multi-output switching network, which can utilize combinatorial photon events. A super-exponential enhancement in multi-port single-photon creation is revealed by theoretical analysis, which significantly reduces the number of heralded single-photon sources needed. We demonstrate multiplexing with two output ports, supported by four integrated heralded single-photon sources. Our strategy has a generation probability of 1.60 times that of conventional methods and 2.58 times that of implementations without multiplexing. This multi-port multiplexed method opens a new avenue for establishing a solid foundation for advanced multi-photon quantum interference and large-scale quantum information processing.