Photon optics and sources of photons

Armien John Samson

In this paper, a more fundamental approach is used in defining optical crosstalk.This is achieved by analyzing the contributions of the non-interacting terms in the probability distribution of detection.Ideally, the detector registers the photons from the source field if and only if an interaction between the source field and the detector occurs.However, there are terms in the probability distribution that suggests that detection occur even when the detector atoms do not interact with the source photons.This is interpreted as the sources of optical crosstalk and it can be argued that these sources of optical crosstalk are due to (a) the secondary photon emission occurring in the bulk of the material which can either be coming directly from the incident photons or from the thermal excitations of the detector atoms; and (b) the interaction of the detector with the vacuum field.

I. K. Karpenko

Wenlan Chen, Kristin M. Beck, Robert Bücker +4 more

The realization of an all-optical transistor, in which one "gate" photon controls a "source" light beam, is a long-standing goal in optics. By stopping a light pulse in an atomic ensemble contained inside an optical resonator, we realized a device in which one stored gate photon controls the resonator transmission of subsequently applied source photons. A weak gate pulse induces bimodal transmission distribution, corresponding to zero and one gate photons. One stored gate photon produces fivefold source attenuation and can be retrieved from the atomic ensemble after switching more than one source photon. Without retrieval, one stored gate photon can switch several hundred source photons. With improved storage and retrieval efficiency, our work may enable various new applications, including photonic quantum gates and deterministic multiphoton entanglement.

Henk Snijders, J. A. Frey, Justin Norman +6 more

High quality sources of single and identical (indistinguishable) photons are essential for photonic quantum information processing including boson sampling, cluster-state quantum computing, and optical quantum repeaters. To enable the use of several single photon sources in parallel and to allow the implementation of complex photonic networks, it is essential that the single photon source can be integrated easily and efficiently with optical fiber technology. Here we show a first all-solid-state InGaAs quantum dot based, integrated cavity-QED enhanced, single photon source. The source is operated by resonant optical pumping through an excitation fiber, and the single photons are collected in the fiber attached to the transmission channel of the cavity.

Climério Paulo da Silva Neto