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Chinese Physics B

Quantum frequency down-conversion of single photons at 1552 nm from single InAs quantum dot

Ben Ma, Sihang Wei, Zesheng Chen, Xiangjun Shang, Haiqiao Ni, Zhichuan Niu

Published Sep 1, 2018• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Near-infrared single photon sources in telecommunication bands, especially at 1550 nm, are required for long-distance quantum communication. Here a down-conversion quantum interface is implemented, where the single photons emitted from single InAs quantum dot at 864 nm is down converted to 1552 nm by using a fiber-coupled periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide and a 1.95 μmm pump laser, and the frequency conversion efficiency is ∼40%. The single-photon purity of quantum dot emission is preserved during the down-conversion process, i.e., g (2) (0), only 0.22 at 1552 nm. This present technique advances the III–V semiconductor quantum dots as a promising platform for long-distance quantum communication.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/27/9/097802

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Near-infrared single photon sources in telecommunication bands, especially at 1550 nm, are required for long-distance quantum communication. Here a down-conversion quantum interface is implemented, where the single photons emitted from single InAs quantum dot at 864 nm is down converted to 1552 nm by using a fiber-coupled periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide and a 1.95 μmm pump laser, and the frequency conversion efficiency is ∼40%. The single-photon purity of quantum dot emission is preserved during the down-conversion process, i.e., g (2) (0), only 0.22 at 1552 nm. This present technique advances the III–V semiconductor quantum dots as a promising platform for long-distance quantum communication.
Long-distance quantum communication networks require appropriate interfaces between matter qubit-based nodes and low-loss photonic quantum channels. We implement a downconversion quantum interface, where the single photons emitted from a semiconductor quantum dot at 910 nm are downconverted to 1560 nm using a fiber-coupled periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide and a 2.2-μm pulsed pump laser. The single-photon character of the quantum dot emission is preserved during the downconversion process: we measure a cross-correlation g(2)(τ = 0) = 0.17 using resonant excitation of the quantum dot. We show that the downconversion interface is fully compatible with coherent optical control of the quantum dot electron spin through the observation of Rabi oscillations in the downconverted photon counts. These results represent a critical step towards a long-distance hybrid quantum network in which subsystems operating at different wavelengths are connected through quantum frequency conversion devices and 1.5-μm quantum channels.
We demonstrate background-free quantum frequency conversion of single photons from an epitaxially-grown InAs quantum dot. Single photons at \approx 980 nm are combined with a pump laser near 1550 nm inside a periodically-poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide, generating single photons at \approx 600 nm. The large red-detuning between the pump and signal wavelengths ensures nearly background-free conversion, avoiding processes such as upconversion of anti-Stokes Raman scattered pump photons in the PPLN crystal. Second-order correlation measurements on the single photon stream are performed both before and after conversion, confirming the preservation of photon statistics during the frequency conversion process.
Single-photon sources based on quantum dots have been shown to exhibit almost ideal properties such as high brightness and purity in terms of clear anti-bunching as well as high two-photon interference visibilities of the emitted photons, making them promising candidates for different quantum information applications such as quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum teleportation. However, as most single-photon sources also quantum dots typically emit light at wavelengths of electronic transitions within the visible or the near infrared range. In order to establish quantum networks with remote building blocks, low-loss single photons at telecom wavelengths are preferable, though. Despite recent progress on emitters of telecom-photons, the most efficient single-photon sources still work at shorter wavelengths. On that matter, quantum frequency down-conversion, being a nonlinear optical process, has been used in recent years to alter the wavelength of single photons to the telecom wavelength range while conserving their nonclassical properties. Characteristics such as lifetime, first-order coherence, anti-bunching and entanglement have been shown to be conserved or even improved due to background suppression during the conversion process, while the conservation of indistinguishability was yet to be shown. Here we present our experimental results on quantum frequency down-conversion of single photons emitted by an InAs/GaAs quantum dot at 903.6 nm following a pulsed excitation of a p-shell exciton at 884 nm. The emitted fluorescence photons are mixed with a strong pump-field at 2155 nm inside a periodically poled lithium niobate ridge waveguide and converted to 1557 nm. Common issues of a large background due to Raman-scattered pump-light photons spectrally overlapping with the converted single photons could largely be avoided, as the pump-wavelength was chosen to be fairly longer than the target wavelength. Additional narrowband spectral filtering at the telecom regime as a result of the small conversion bandwidth and using a high-performance fiber-Bragg-grating solely left the detector dark counts as the only noise source in our setup. Therefore, we could achieve conversion efficiencies of more than 20 %. In order to test the indistinguishability, sequentially emitted photons were fed into a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and spatially as well as temporally overlapped at the output beam splitter. Cross-correlation measurements between both output-ports of the beam splitter exhibit two-photon interference contrasts of more than 40 % prior to and after the down-conversion step. Accordingly, we demonstrate that the process of quantum frequency conversion preserves photon indistinguishability and can be used to establish a versatile source of indistinguishable single photons at the telecom C-Band. Furthermore our scheme allows for converting photons in a wavelength band from 900 nm to 910 nm to the same telecom target wavelength. This enables us to test indistinguishability of frequency-converted photons, originally stemming from different sources with dinstinguishable wavelengths.
On-demand indistinguishable single-photon sources are essential for quantum networking and communication. Semiconductor quantum dots are among the most promising candidates, but their typical emission wavelength renders them unsuitable for use in fiber networks. Here, we present quantum frequency conversion of near-infrared photons from a bright quantum dot to the telecommunication C-band, allowing integration with existing fiber architectures. We use a custom-built, tunable 2400 nm seed laser to convert single photons from 942 nm to 1550 nm in a difference-frequency generation process. We achieve an end-to-end conversion efficiency of ≃35%, demonstrate count rates approaching 1 MHz at 1550 nm with g(2)(0)=0.043(1), and achieve Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) visibilities of 60%. We expect this scheme to be preferable to quantum dot sources directly emitting at telecom wavelengths for fiber-based quantum networking.
Quantum frequency converters are key enabling technologies in photonic quantum information science to bridge the gap between quantum emitters and telecom photons. Here, we report a coherent frequency converter scheme combining a fiber-coupled nonlinear optical Lithium Niobate waveguide with a fiber-pigtailed single-photon source based on semiconductor quantum dots. Single and indistinguishable photons are converted from 925.7 nm to the telecommunication C-band, with a 48.4% end-to-end efficiency and full preservation of single-photon purity and indistinguishability. The integration of the two fiber-based modules achieving top-level performance represents an important step toward the practical interconnection of future quantum information processing systems operating at different wavelengths.
We show that quantum frequency conversion (QFC) can overcome the spectral distinguishability common to inhomogeneously broadened solid-state quantum emitters. QFC is implemented by combining single photons from an InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) at 980 nm with a 1550 nm pump laser in a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide to generate photons at 600 nm with a signal-to-background ratio exceeding 100:1. Photon correlation and two-photon interference measurements confirm that both the single photon character and wave packet interference of individual QD states are preserved during frequency conversion. Finally, we convert two spectrally separate QD transitions to the same wavelength in a single PPLN waveguide and show that the resulting field exhibits nonclassical two-photon interference.