Experimental Fock-State Capability of Non-Ideal Single-Photon States

. We thereby introduce an experimental Fock-state capability for single-photon sources, which uses phase-space interference for extreme bunching events as a quantifier. In contrast to autocorrelation functions, this operational approach takes into account not only residual multi-photon components but also vacuum admixture and the dispersion of the individual photon statistics. We apply this approach to high-purity single photons generated from an optical parametric oscillator and show that they can lead to a Fock-state capability of at least 14. Our work demonstrates a novel collective benchmark for single-photon sources and their use in subsequent stringent applications.

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