Single-shot characterization of photon indistinguishability with dielectric metasurfaces

Abstract

Characterizing the indistinguishability of photons is a key task in quantum photonics, underpinning the tuning and stabilization of the photon sources and thereby increasing the accuracy of quantum operations. The protocols for measuring the degree of indistinguishability conventionally require photon-coincidence measurements at several different time or phase delays, which is a fundamental bottleneck towards fast measurements and real-time monitoring of indistinguishability. Here, we develop a static dielectric metasurface grating without any reconfigurable elements that realizes a tailored multiport transformation in the free-space configuration without the need for phase locking and enables single-shot characterization of the indistinguishability between two photons in multiple degrees of freedom including time, spectrum, spatial modes, and polarization. Topology optimization is employed to design a silicon metasurface with polarization independence, high transmission, and high tolerance to measurement noise. We fabricate the metasurface and experimentally quantify the indistinguishability of photons in the time domain with fidelity over 98.4%. We anticipate that the developed framework based on ultrathin metasurfaces can be further extended for multi-photon states and additional degrees of freedom associated with spatial modalities.