Abstract
As single-photon sources become more mature and are used more often in quantum information, communications and measurement applications, their characterization becomes more important. Single-photon-like light is often characterized by its brightness, and two quantum properties: the single-photon composition and the photon indistinguishability. While it is desirable to obtain these quantities from a single measurement, currently two or more measurements are required. Here, we simultaneously determine the brightness, the single photon purity, the indistinguishability, and the statistical distribution of Fock states to third order for a quantum light source. The measurement uses a pair of two-photon (n = 2) number-resolving detectors. n > 2 number-resolving detectors provide no additional advantage in the single-photon characterization. The new method extracts more information per experimental trial than a conventional measurement for all input states, and is particularly more e cient for statistical mixtures of photon states. Thus, using this n=2, number- resolving detector scheme will provide advantages in a variety of quantum optics measurements and systems.
Highlights
Single-photon light is a central element of emerging quantum information systems such as quantum repeaters [1,2,3,4] and bosonic logic [5,6,7,8,9,10]
This nonclassical light is used in quantum measurement protocols
Using the light emission from a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) structure as a test light source, we have demonstrated a new measurement approach, allowing simultaneous measurement of the brightness, suppression of multiphotons, and photon indistinguishability
Summary
Single-photon light is a central element of emerging quantum information systems such as quantum repeaters [1,2,3,4] and bosonic logic [5,6,7,8,9,10] This nonclassical light is used in quantum measurement protocols. To measure the photon-state statistics to nth order, normalized nth-order correlations could be measured using a single, appropriately fast, nth-order, number-resolving detector, if such a detector were available [see Fig. 1(a)] [19,20,21]. Using two-photon (n 1⁄4 2) number-resolving detectors in place of single-photon avalanche detectors (SPADs), we show here the simultaneous measurement of the photon state This measurement includes the photon flux, the number-state statistics to third order, and the indistinguishability. It can be used to model such circuits, or it can be incorporated within them for local metrology testing
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