Abstract
Quantum-light sources based on semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are promising candidates for many applications in quantum photonics and quantum communication. Important emission characteristics of such emitters, namely the single-photon purity and photon indistinguishability, are usually assessed via time-correlated measurements using standard ‘click’ detectors in Hanbury Brown and Twiss or Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM-) type configurations. In this work, we employ a state-of-the-art photon-number-resolving (PNR) detection system based on superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs) to directly access the photon-number distribution of deterministically fabricated solid-state single-photon sources. Offering quantum efficiencies close to unity and high energy resolution, our TES-based two-channel detector system allows us to analyse the quantum optical properties of a QD-based non-classical light source. In particular, it enables the direct observation of the two-particle Fock-state resulting from interference of quantum mechanically indistinguishable photons in HOM-experiments. Additionally, comparative measurements reveal excellent quantitative agreement of the photon-indistinguishabilities obtained with PNR ((90 ± 7)%) and standard click ((90 ± 5)%) detectors. Our work thus demonstrates that TES-based detectors are perfectly suitable for the quantum metrology of non-classical light sources and higlights appealing prospects for the efficient implementation of quantum information tasks based on multi-photon states.
Highlights
28 March 2019Martin von Helversen, Jonas Böhm, Marco Schmidt, Manuel Gschrey, Jan-Hindrik Schulze, André Strittmatter, Sven Rodt, Jörn Beyer, Tobias Heindel and Stephan Reitzenstein
The dawn of quantum technologies is expected to revolutionize the fields of sensing, computing, and secure data communication [1]
The experimental results obtained in our work using PNR as well as click detectors in HBT- and HOMconfiguration are comparatively summarized in table 1
Summary
Martin von Helversen, Jonas Böhm, Marco Schmidt, Manuel Gschrey, Jan-Hindrik Schulze, André Strittmatter, Sven Rodt, Jörn Beyer, Tobias Heindel and Stephan Reitzenstein.
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