Improving the indistinguishability of single photons from an ion-cavity system

Abstract

We investigate schemes for generating indistinguishable single photons, a key feature of quantum networks, from a trapped ion coupled to an optical cavity. Through selection of the initial state in a cavity-assisted Raman transition, we suppress the detrimental effect of spontaneous emission present in previously demonstrated schemes in similar systems. We measure a visibility of 72(2)% without correction for background counts in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interference measurement for the new scheme, with 51(2)% for a commonly-used scheme with similar parameters. Schemes such as the one demonstrated here have applications in distributed quantum computing and communications, where high fidelities are vital, and depend on the mutual indistinguishability of single photons.