Abstract
The maturation of many photonic technologies from individual components to next-generation system-level circuits will require exceptional active control of complex states of light. A prime example is in quantum photonic technology: while single-photon processes are often probabilistic, it has been shown in theory that rapid and adaptive feedforward operations are sufficient to enable scalability. Here, we use simple “off-the-shelf” optical components to demonstrate active multiplexing—adaptive rerouting to single modes—of eight single-photon “bins” from a heralded source. Unlike other possible implementations, which can be costly in terms of resources or temporal delays, our new configuration exploits the benefits of both time and space degrees of freedom, enabling a significant increase in the single-photon emission probability. This approach is likely to be employed in future near-deterministic photon multiplexers with expected improvements in integrated quantum photonic technology.
Highlights
The active control of light using feedforward/feedback techniques is emerging as an important resource for future large-scale photonic technologies (e.g., [1,2,3])
For HSPSs, the maximum theoretical single-photon emission probability is limited to 25% [7], sufficient for small-scale applications and proof-of-principle experiments, but not scalable in quantum photonic applications requiring many single photons on demand simultaneously
Under ideal conditions and with number-resolving detectors, the theoretical maximum single-photon emission probability of a HSPS is limited to 25% [7], due to the presence of multiphoton pair terms in Eq (1)
Summary
The active control of light using feedforward/feedback techniques is emerging as an important resource for future large-scale photonic technologies (e.g., [1,2,3]). Active control has been understood to have a foundational role since seminal proposals [4,5] have shown rapid and adaptive measurement and feedforward operations as a path to scalability. The benefit of this approach for quantum photonics is the simplicity of the individual components used in the control network— “standard” linear optical elements—as opposed to approaches that require exotic materials or development processes for, e.g., quantum light–matter interfaces [6]. As with other generation processes in quantum photonics with heralded success probabilities well below 50%, (e.g., [8,9,10]), the success probabilities must be increased above relevant practical thresholds (often well above 50%)
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