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Improved Heralded Single-Photon Source with a Photon-Number-Resolving Superconducting Nanowire Detector

Samantha I. Davis1,2, Andrew Mueller2,3, Raju Valivarthi1,2, Nikolai Lauk1,2, Lautaro Narvaez1,2, Boris Korzh4, Andrew D. Beyer4, Olmo Cerri1, Marco Colangelo5 et al.

Karl K. Berggren5, Matthew D. Shaw4, Si Xie1,2,6, Neil Sinclair1,2,7, and Maria Spiropulu1,2,*

  • 1Division of Physics Mathematics and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 2Alliance for Quantum Technologies (AQT), California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 3Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 4Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91109, USA
  • 5Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
  • 6Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA
  • 7John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

  • *Corresponding author. smaria@caltech.edu
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Phys. Rev. Applied 18, 064007 – Published 2 December, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.18.064007

Abstract

Deterministic generation of single photons is essential for many quantum information technologies. A bulk optical nonlinearity emitting a photon pair, where the measurement of one of the photons heralds the presence of the other, is commonly used with the caveat that the single-photon emission rate is constrained due to a trade-off between multiphoton events and pair emission rate. Using an efficient and low noise photon-number-resolving superconducting nanowire detector we herald, in real time, a single photon at telecommunication wavelength. We perform a second-order photon correlation g2(0) measurement of the signal mode conditioned on the measured photon number of the idler mode for various pump powers and demonstrate an improvement of a heralded single-photon source. We develop an analytical model using a phase-space formalism that encompasses all multiphoton effects and relevant imperfections, such as loss and multiple Schmidt modes. We perform a maximum-likelihood fit to test the agreement of the model to the data and extract the best-fit mean photon number μ of the pair source for each pump power. A maximum reduction of 0.118±0.012 in the photon g2(0) correlation function at μ=0.327±0.007 is obtained, indicating a strong suppression of multiphoton emissions. For a fixed g2(0)=7×10−3, we increase the single pair generation probability by 25%. Our experiment, built using fiber-coupled and off-the-shelf components, delineates a path to engineering ideal sources of single photons.

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Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Corrections

22 December, 2022

Correction: A proof correction regarding a term in Eq. (10) was implemented incorrectly and has been set right.

Article Text

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Phys. Rev. Applied 18, 064007– Published 2 December, 2022
  • Received 19 April 2022
  • Revised 22 August 2022
  • Accepted 23 August 2022
  • Corrected 22 December 2022
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