Enhancement of a silicon waveguide single photon source by temporal multiplexing

Abstract

Efficient generation of single photons is one of the key challenges of building photonic quantum technology, such as quantum computers and long-distance quantum networks. Photon source multiplexing—where successful pair generation is heralded by the detection of one of the photons, and its partner is routed to a single mode output—has long been known to offer a concrete solution, with output probability tending toward unity as loss is reduced. Here, we present a temporally multiplexed integrated single photon source based on a silicon waveguide and a low-loss fibre switch and loop architecture, which achieves enhancement of the single photon output probability of 4.5 ± 0.5, while retaining g (2)(0) = 0.01.