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A single-photon turnstile device

Nature volume 397, pages 500–503 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Quantum-mechanical interference between indistinguishable quantum particles profoundly affects their arrival time and counting statistics. Photons from a thermal source tend to arrive together (bunching) and their counting distribution is broader than the classical Poisson limit1. Electrons from a thermal source, on the other hand, tend to arrive separately (anti-bunching) and their counting distribution is narrower than the classical Poisson limit2,3,4. Manipulation of quantum-statistical properties of photons with various non-classical sources is at the heart of quantum optics: features normally characteristic of fermions — such as anti-bunching, sub-poissonian and squeezing (sub-shot-noise) behaviours — have now been demonstrated5. A single-photon turnstile device was proposed6,7,8 to realize an effect similar to conductance quantization. Only one electron can occupy a single state owing to the Pauli exclusion principle and, for an electron waveguide that supports only one propagating transverse mode, this leads to the quantization of electrical conductance: the conductance of each propagating mode is then given by GQ = e2/h (where e is the charge of the electron and h is Planck's constant; ref. 9). Here we report experimental progress towards generation of a similar flow of single photons with a well regulated time interval.

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Figure 1: Operation and fabrication of our single-photon turnstile device.
Figure 2: The electrical characteristics of the single-photon turnstile device.
Figure 3: The photon emission characteristics of the single-photon turnstile device.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. H. Hogue for providing us with SSPM detectors. This work was partially supported by JSEP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ERATO Quantum Fluctuation Project, Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    J. Kim, O. Benson & Y. Yamamoto

  2. ERATO Quantum Fluctuation Project, Hamamatsu Photonics Inc., Hamamatsu, 434-0041, Shizuoka, Japan

    H. Kan

  3. NTT Basic Research Laboratories, 3-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya Atsugi, 243-01, Kanagawa, Japan

    Y. Yamamoto

Authors
  1. J. Kim
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  3. H. Kan
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  4. Y. Yamamoto
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Kim, J., Benson, O., Kan, H. et al. A single-photon turnstile device. Nature 397, 500–503 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/17295

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