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 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 of the pair source for each pump power. A maximum reduction of in the photon correlation function at is obtained, indicating a strong suppression of multiphoton emissions. For a fixed , 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.
4 More- Received 19 April 2022
- Revised 22 August 2022
- Accepted 23 August 2022
- Corrected 22 December 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.18.064007
© 2022 American Physical Society
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.