Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device
Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device
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来自单光子器件的不可区分光子
DOI：
10.1038/nature01086
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发表时间：
2002-10-10
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Yamamoto, Y
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Santori, C;Fattal, D;Yamamoto, Y
单光子源最近已使用各种设备进行了演示，包括分子（1-3）、介观量子阱（4）、色心（5）、捕获离子（6）和半导体量子点（7-11）。与相同强度的泊松分布源相比，这些源很少在同一脉冲中发射两个或多个光子。在量子信息领域已经提出了单光子源的许多应用，但大多数（包括线性光学量子计算（12））也要求连续光子具有相同的波包。对于基于单个量子发射器的源，发射器因此必须以快速或确定性的方式被激发，并且与其周围环境相互作用很少。在这里，我们通过红欧曼德尔型双光子干涉实验来测试微腔中半导体量子点发射的光子的不可区分性(13,14)。我们发现连续光子在很大程度上无法区分，平均波包重叠高达 0.81，使得该源可用于量子光学和量子信息的各种实验。
Single-photon sources have recently been demonstrated using a variety of devices, including molecules(1-3), mesoscopic quantum wells(4), colour centres(5), trapped ions(6) and semiconductor quantum dots(7-11). Compared with a Poisson-distributed source of the same intensity, these sources rarely emit two or more photons in the same pulse. Numerous applications for single-photon sources have been proposed in the field of quantum information, but most-including linear-optical quantum computation(12)-also require consecutive photons to have identical wave packets. For a source based on a single quantum emitter, the emitter must therefore be excited in a rapid or deterministic way, and interact little with its surrounding environment. Here we test the indistinguishability of photons emitted by a semiconductor quantum dot in a microcavity through a Hong-Ou-Mandel-type two-photon interference experiment(13,14). We find that consecutive photons are largely indistinguishable, with a mean wave-packet overlap as large as 0.81, making this source useful in a variety of experiments in quantum optics and quantum information.