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Advanced Photon Counting Techniques

A dictionary for single photonics

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

Published Jun 7, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1117/12.3016082

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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.
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.
Quantum photonics technologies have realized great advancements over the past decade. Quantum photonic integrated circuits, devices which incorporate single-photon emitters, detectors and optical components on a single device, are already being implemented in quantum computing and networking hardware. The verification and validation of system performance, including the characterization of single-photon sources and the efficiency of single-photon detectors is an ongoing challenge, especially for integrated devices. One approach to characterizing a single-photon source is to measure the optical power of the emitted photons, which can be applied in turn to the characterization of on-chip components within an integrated quantum photonics platform. This presentation will address the development of metrological devices and measurement techniques, where an ultra-sensitive radiometer chip directly measures the optical power of photons emitted from a quantum dot single-photon source. This measurement technique demonstrates the feasibility of implementing optical power measurements of on-demand single photon sources in the verification and validation of quantum photonics systems.