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OSA Quantum 2.0 Conference

A micropillar single-photon source design numerically optimized for high efficiency and high indistinguishability

Bi-Ying Wang, Emil V. Denning, Chao‐Yang Lu, Niels Gregersen

Published Jan 1, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We perform numerical optimization of micropillar single-photon source. We present calculations of achievable efficiency and indistinguishability with phonon-induced decoherence, and identify the design parameters providing the best performance.
DOI
10.1364/quantum.2020.qth7b.9

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We present a numerical investigation of the performance of the micropillar cavity single-photon source in terms of collection efficiency and indistinguishability of the emitted photons in the presence of non-Markovian phonon-induced decoherence. We analyze the physics governing the efficiency using a single-mode model, and we optimize efficiency $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$ and the indistinguishability $\ensuremath{\eta}$ on an equal footing by computing $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}\ensuremath{\eta}$ as function of the micropillar design parameters. We show that $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}\ensuremath{\eta}$ is limited to $\ensuremath{\sim}0.96$ for the ideal geometry due to an inherent tradeoff between efficiency and indistinguishability. Finally, we subsequently consider the influence of realistic fabrication imperfections and Markovian pure dephasing noise on the performance.
Single-photon sources with near-unity efficiency and indistinguishability play a major role in the development of quantum technologies. However, on-demand excitation of the emitter imposes substantial limitations to the source performance. Here, we show that coherent two-color pumping allows for population inversion arbitrarily close to unity in bulk quantum dots thanks to a decoupling effect between the emitter and its phonon bath. Driving a micropillar single-photon source with this scheme, we calculate very high photon emission into the cavity mode (0.95 photons per pulse) together with excellent indistinguishability (0.975) in a realistic configuration, thereby removing the limitations imposed by the excitation scheme on single-photon source engineering.
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The desiderata for an ideal photon source are high brightness, high single-photon purity, and high indistinguishability. Defining brightness at the first collection lens, these properties have been simultaneously demonstrated with solid-state sources, however absolute source efficiencies remain close to the 1% level, and indistinguishability only demonstrated for photons emitted consecutively on the few nanosecond scale. Here we employ deterministic quantum dot-micropillar devices to demonstrate solid-state single-photon sources with scalable performance. In one device, an absolute brightness at the output of a single-mode fibre of 14% and purities of 97.1-99.0% are demonstrated. When non-resontantly excited, it emits a long stream of photons that exhibit indistinguishability up to 70%---above the classical limit of 50%---even after 33 consecutively emitted photons, a 400 ns separation between them. Resonant excitation in other devices results in near-optimal indistinguishability values: 96% at short timescales, remaining at 88% in timescales as large as 463 ns, after 39 emitted photons. The performance attained by our devices brings solid-state sources into a regime suitable for scalable implementations.
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