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Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device

Nature volume 419, pages 594–597 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Single-photon sources have recently been demonstrated using a variety of devices, including molecules1,2,3, mesoscopic quantum wells4, colour centres5, trapped ions6 and semiconductor quantum dots7,8,9,10,11. 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 computation12—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 experiment13,14. 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.

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Figure 1: The single-photon source.
Figure 2: Time-averaged emission properties of quantum dots 1, 2 and 3.
Figure 3: Two-photon interference experiment.
Figure 4: The probability that two photons that collide at the beam splitter leave in opposite directions, plotted as a function of interferometer delay offset, Δt.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Scherer and T. Yoshie for access to the CAIBE system and for their help in fabrication of the structures; J. Plant for assistance with SEM imaging; and B. C. Sanders for discussions. This work was supported in part by MURI; G.S.S. was supported by DARPA, ARO and JST.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Quantum Entanglement Project, ICORP, JST, E. L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305-4088, USA

    Charles Santori, David Fattal, Jelena Vučković, Glenn S. Solomon & Yoshihisa Yamamoto

  2. Solid-State Photonics Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305-4085, USA

    Glenn S. Solomon

  3. NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Atsugi, 243-0198, Kanagawa, Japan

    Yoshihisa Yamamoto

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  1. Charles Santori
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  2. David Fattal
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Correspondence to Charles Santori.

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Santori, C., Fattal, D., Vučković, J. et al. Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device. Nature 419, 594–597 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01086

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