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arXiv:quant-ph/0202130 · Physical Review Letters

Direct Measurement of the Photon Statistics of a Triggered Single Photon Source

François Treussart, Romain Alléaume, Véronique Le Floc’h, Liantuan Xiao, Jean-Michel Courty, Jean-François Roch

Published Aug 13, 2002• 93 citations
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Abstract

We studied intensity fluctuations of a single photon source relying on the pulsed excitation of the fluorescence of a single molecule at room temperature. We directly measured the Mandel parameter Q(T) over 4 orders of magnitude of observation time scale T by recording every photocount. On time scale of a few excitation periods, sub-Poissonian statistics is clearly observed and the probablility of two-photons events is 10 times smaller than Poissonian pulses. On longer times, blinking in the fluorescence, due to the molecular triplet state, produces an excess of noise.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.89.093601

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We studied intensity fluctuations of a single photon source relying on the pulsed excitation of the fluorescence of a single molecule at room temperature. We directly measured the Mandel parameter Q(T) over 4 orders of magnitude of observation time scale T by recording every photocount. On time scale of a few excitation periods, sub-Poissonian statistics is clearly observed and the probablility of two-photons events is 10 times smaller than Poissonian pulses. On longer times, blinking in the fluorescence, due to the molecular triplet state, produces an excess of noise.
We report on the realization of a single photon source relying on the pulsed excitation of a single organic molecule at room temperature, and the study of its intensity fluctuations over 4 orders of magnitude of the observation time scale. On a time scale of a few excitation periods, sub-poissonian statistics is clearly observed and the probability of multiphoton events is 10 times smaller than for equivalent Poissonian pulses. An excess of noise appears on longer timescale, due to the blinking produced by the molecular triplet state.
Photon emission from a single molecule at room temperature exhibits nonclassical features. Continuous wave fluorescence excitation provides antibunching in the emitted photons sequence as a signature of the property to only emit one photon at a time. A short pulsed excitation can then produce single photons on demand, with an overall quantum efficiency up to 4.5% in our experimental setup. Direct measurement of the Mandel parameter Q ( T ) for an observation period of duration T follows a subpoissonian statistics on short time scale and superpoissonian statistics on longer time scale. The latter is attributed to blinking in the fluorescence due to the occurence of a metastable molecular triplet state.
In a recent experiment, we reported the time-domain intensity noise measurement of a single-photon source relying on single-molecule fluorescence control. In this paper, we present data processing starting from photocount timestamps. The theoretical analytical expression of the time-dependent Mandel parameter Q ( T ) of an intermittent single-photon source is derived from ON↔OFF dynamics. Finally, source intensity noise analysis, using the Mandel parameter, is quantitatively compared with the usual approach relying on the time autocorrelation function, both methods yielding the same molecular dynamical parameters.
We theoretically derive exact expressions for Mandel's Q parameter of the triggered single molecular source, which is inferred from the probabilities P RS ( n ) using the record of each photon detection event based on Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection. The real triggered source is recognized as an ideal single photon source with a Poissonian statistics background. How to decrease the background and to increase the efficiency are discussed. It is established that the sub-Poissonian statistics formation can be determined by comparing the measured Q RS of the real single triggered molecular with Q C of the Poissonian source containing the same mean photons. By this method, we also give an efficient way to measure signal-to-background ratios of triggered single photons.
We theoretically derive exact expressions for Mandel's Q parameter of the triggered single molecular source, which is inferred from the probabilities PRs (n) using the recorded of each photon detection event based on Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection. The real triggered source is recognized as an ideal single photon source with a Poissonian statistics background. How to decease the background and to increase the efficiency are discussed. It is established that the sub-Poissonian statistics formation can be determined by comparing the measured QRs of the real single triggered molecular with Qc of the Poissonian source containing the same mean photons. By this method, we also give an efficient way to measure signal-to-background ratios of triggered single photons.
The direct measurement of the Mandel parameter of weak laser pulses, with 10 ns pulse duration time and the mean number of photon per pulse nˉ\bar nnˉ being approximately 0.1, is investigated by recording every photocount event. With the Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection scheme, and not more than one photon per pulse being detected during the sample time by single-photon counters, we have found that the single mode diode laser with driving current lower than the threshold yields a sub-Poissonian statistics. In addition, when the diode laser driving current is much higher than the threshold, it is validated that the Mandel parameterQ C of the Poissonian coherent state is nearly −nˉ/2 - \bar n/2−nˉ/2 . The experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical prediction considering the measurement error.