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Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology II

Dictionary of single-photon terms to support the emerging quantum industry

Joshua C. Bienfang, Thomas Gerrits, Paulina S. Kuo, Alan L. Migdall, Sergey V. Polyakov, Oliver Slattery

Published Mar 8, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As the quantum revolution moves forward, there is a clear need for a set of common terms to be used in characterizing the performance of single-photon sources and detectors. A common language allows fair comparison of commercial devices and helps clarify what performance can be expected. To address this need, an effort to construct a dictionary of single-photon terms was begun at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and including input from the quantum industry and other National Metrology Institutes. We report on the progress of this effort and seek additional input from the single-photon community.

DOI
10.1117/12.2657182

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As the quantum revolution moves forward, there is a clear need for a set of common terms to be used in characterizing the performance of single-photon sources and detectors. A common language allows fair comparison of commercial devices and helps clarify what performance can be expected. To address this need, an effort to construct a dictionary of single-photon terms was begun at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and including input from the quantum industry and other National Metrology Institutes. We report on the progress of this effort and seek additional input from the single-photon community.
As the field of single-photon sources and detectors has grown over the past two decades, a need has been identified for a commonly understood and clearly defined set of terms relevant to device performance and characterization. A common language promotes understanding among scientists in the field and facilitates the characterization and comparison of devices and systems. During the recent pandemic we undertook an effort to compile a set of definitions and usages for single-photon sources and detectors. We have sought and continue to seek input from researchers around the world for the purpose of updating our definitions as refinements are suggested. In this talk we present our approach, the current status, and give some illustrative examples from this single-photon sources and detectors dictionary.
Emerging technologies demand innovations in metrology: • Agility – to keep pace with a rapidly changing technical landscape; • Ability – to develop novel, perhaps first-ever, measurement capabilities; • Comparability and interoperability – across vendors, in commercial timeframes; • Accelerated delivery – because formal standards may be obsolete by the time they’re published. The same quantum technologies that have revolutionized metrology, such as Josephson junctions that are used to create the world’s most accurate voltage standards and ion traps that are used in time and frequency standards, also underpin emerging new markets in quantum computing, networking and sensing – and these quantum-based products require entirely new approaches for measurement and characterization. The world’s metrology institutes have been at the forefront of the quantum revolution, being both early developers and adopters of quantum technologies for metrology, and are uniquely poised to spearhead the development of metrology for quantum – those measurements and related standards needed by industry to underpin quantum-based products. The metrology community is positioned to create trust in the emerging quantum economy due to its long history of objectivity, neutrality and international collaboration; anticipating industry’s needs to be ready with rigorous measurement capabilities as technologies evolve; and its having formed institutions such as the CIPM, BIPM and IMEKO to support collaborative efforts. The BIPM hosted a workshop in March 2024 which brought together 149 participants from 43 NMIs and designated institutes (DIs) from 39 economies, along with industry representatives, to discuss how best to leverage the expertise of the worlds national metrology institutes (NMIs) and their designated institutes (DIs) to accelerate the development and adoption of quantum technologies through measurements and standards. The workshop supported coordinated development and sharing of measurement “best practices” in support of future standardization, the mission of a new collaborative initiative referred to as NMI-Q. The NMI-Q organizing committee, comprised of representatives of the NMIs of Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are working on a cooperation framework inspired by the successful VAMAS organization, which conducts coordinated pre-standardization work in material science. NMI-Q has initiated early work in quantum photonics, and expects to expand to a breadth of technical areas, such as measurement and characterization to support multiple quantum computing platforms, quantum networking models, and sensing modalities.
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The generation, measurement, and manipulation of light at the single- and few-photon levels underpin a rapidly expanding range of applications. These range from applications moving into the few-photon regime in order to achieve improved sensitivity and/or energy efficiency, as well as new applications that operate solely in this regime, such as quantum key distribution and physical quantum random number generation. There is intensive research to develop new quantum optical technologies, for example, quantum sensing, simulation, and computing. These applications rely on the performance of the single-photon sources and detectors they employ; this review article gives an overview of the methods, both conventional and recently developed, that are available for measuring the performance of these devices, with traceability to the SI system.