Search

Solid-state quantum light sources based on semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are increasingly employed in photonic quantum information applications. Especially when moving towards real-world scenarios outside shielded lab environments, the efficient and robust coupling of nanophotonic devices to single-mode optical fibers offers substantial advantage by enabling "plug-and-play" operation. In this work we present a fiber-pigtailed cavity-enhanced source of flying qubits emitting single indistinguishable photons at clock-rates exceeding 1 GHz. This is achieved by employing a fully deterministic technique for fiber-pigtailing optimized QD-devices based on hybrid circular Bragg grating (hCBG) micro-cavities. The fabricated fiber-pigtailed hCBGs feature radiative emission lifetimes of $<$80 ps, corresponding to a Purcell factor of $\sim$9, a suppression of multiphoton emission events with $g^{(2)}$(0) $<$1%, a photon-indistinguishability >80% and a measured single-photon coupling efficiency of 53% in a high numerical aperture single-mode fiber, corresponding to 1.2 Megaclicks per second at the single-photon detectors. Our results show that fiber-pigtailed quantum light sources based on hCBG cavities are a prime candidate for applications of quantum information science., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. The current v1 version of the manuscript referes to a Supplementary Information (S.I.) for further experimental details. This S.I. will be provided attached to a v2-Version of the manuscript that incoorperates potential revisions for a related journal submission

We present Purcell-enhanced ($F_\mathrm{P} > 25$) semiconductor InAs quantum dot radiative lifetimes of $T_1 < 30~\mathrm{ps}$, enabled by deterministic hybrid circular Bragg gratings (hCBGs). We investigate the benefits of these short T1 times on the two-photon indistinguishability for quasi-resonant and strictly resonant excitation, and observe visibilities $\geq96\%$ at 12.5 ns time delay of consecutively emitted photons. The strongly Purcell-enhanced decay times enable a high degree of indistinguishability for elevated temperatures of up to 30 K, and moreover, allow for excitation of up to 1.28 GHz repetition rate. Our work highlights the prospects of high Purcell enhanced solid-state quantum emitters for applications in quantum information and technologies operating at GHz clock-rates., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. The current manuscript v1 references a Supplementary Information for further experimental details. This S.I. will be added in a v2-version of the manuscript, once the peer-review of the related journal submission is complete

Laser light possesses perfect coherence, but cannot be attenuated to single photons via linear optics. An elegant route to convert laser light into single photons is based on photon blockade in a cavity with a single atom in the strong coupling regime. However, the single-photon purity achieved by this method remains relatively low. Here we propose an interference-based approach where laser light can be transformed into single photons by destructively interfering with a weak but super-bunched incoherent field emitted from a cavity coupling to a single quantum emitter. We demonstrate this idea by measuring the reflected light of a laser field which drives a double-sided optical microcavity containing a single artificial atom-quantum dot (QD) in the Purcell regime. The reflected light consists of a superposition of the driving field with the cavity output field. We achieve the second-order autocorrelation g2(0)=0.030+-0.002 and the two-photon interference visibility 94.3%+-0.2. By separating the coherent and incoherent fields in the reflected light, we observe that the incoherent field from the cavity exhibits super-bunching with g2(0)=41+-2 while the coherent field remains Poissonian statistics. By controlling the relative amplitude of coherent and incoherent fields, we verify that photon statistics of reflected light is tuneable from perfect anti-bunching to super-bunching in agreement with our predictions. Our results demonstrate photon statistics of light as a quantum interference phenomenon that a single QD can scatter two photons simultaneously at low driving fields in contrast to the common picture that a single two-level quantum emitter can only scatter (or absorb and emit) single photons. This work opens the door to tailoring photon statistics of laser light via cavity or waveguide quantum electrodynamics and interference., Comment: Comments are welcome

The realization of efficient quantum light sources relies on the integration of self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) into photonic nanostructures with high spatial positioning accuracy. In this work, we present a comprehensive investigation of the QD position accuracy, obtained using two marker-based QD positioning techniques, photoluminescence (PL) and cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging, as well as using a marker-free in-situ electron beam lithography (in-situ EBL) technique. We employ four PL imaging configurations with three different image processing approaches and compare them with CL imaging. We fabricate circular mesa structures based on the obtained QD coordinates from both PL and CL image processing to evaluate the final positioning accuracy. This yields final position offset of the QD relative to the mesa center of $\mu_x$ = (-40$\pm$58) nm and $\mu_y$ = (-39$\pm$85) nm with PL imaging and $\mu_x$ = (-39$\pm$30) nm and $\mu_y$ = (25$\pm$77) nm with CL imaging, which are comparable to the offset $\mu_x$ = (20$\pm$40) nm and $\mu_y$ = (-14$\pm$39) nm obtained using the in-situ EBL method. We discuss the possible causes of the observed offsets, which are significantly larger than the QD localization uncertainty obtained from simply imaging the QD light emission from an unstructured wafer. Our study highlights the influences of the image processing technique and the subsequent fabrication process on the final positioning accuracy for a QD placed inside a photonic nanostructure.

We report the slow-light enhanced spin-resolved in-plane emission from a single quantum dot (QD) in a photonic crystal waveguide (PCW). The slow light dispersions in PCWs are designed to match the emission wavelengths of single QDs. The resonance between two spin states emitted from a single QD and a slow light mode of a waveguide is investigated under a magnetic field with Faraday configuration. Two spin states of a single QD experience different degrees of enhancement as their emission wavelengths are shifted by combining diamagnetic and Zeeman effects with an optical excitation power control. A circular polarization degree up to 0.81 is achieved by changing the off-resonant excitation power. Strongly polarized photon emission enhanced by a slow light mode shows great potential to attain controllable spin-resolved photon sources for integrated optical quantum networks on chip., Comment: 7 pages,5 figures

Integrated quantum photonic circuits (IQPCs) with deterministically integrated quantum emitters are critical elements for scalable quantum information applications and have attracted significant attention in recent years. However, scaling up them towards fully functional photonic circuits with multiple deterministically integrated quantum emitters to generate photonic input states remains a great challenge. In this work, we report on a monolithic prototype IQPC consisting of two pre-selected quantum dots deterministically integrated into nanobeam cavities at the input ports of a 2x2 multimode interference beam-splitter. The on-chip beam splitter exhibits a splitting ratio of nearly 50/50 and the integrated quantum emitters have high single-photon purity, enabling on-chip HBT experiments, depicting deterministic scalability. Overall, this marks a cornerstone toward scalable and fully-functional IQPCs.

The coherent interaction of electromagnetic fields with solid-state two-level systems can yield deterministic quantum light sources for photonic quantum technologies. To date, the performance of semiconductor single-photon sources based on three-level systems is limited mainly due to a lack of high photon indistinguishability. Here, we tailor the cavity-enhanced spontaneous emission from a ladder-type three-level system in a single epitaxial quantum dot (QD) through stimulated emission. After populating the biexciton (XX) of the QD through two-photon resonant excitation (TPE), we use another laser pulse to selectively depopulate the XX state into an exciton (X) state with a predefined polarization. The stimulated XX-X emission modifies the X decay dynamics and yields improved polarized single-photon source characteristics such as a source brightness of 0.030(2), a single-photon purity of 0.998(1), and an indistinguishability of 0.926(4). Our method can be readily applied to existing QD single-photon sources and expands the capabilities of three-level systems for advanced quantum photonic functionalities., Comment: NN to appear, comments are welcome

A very long lifetime emission with non-single exponential decay characteristic has been reported for single InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) samples, in which there exists a long-lived metastable state in the wetting layer (WL) [ACS Photonics 2020,7,3228-3235]. In this article we have proposed a new three-level model to simulate the emission decay curve. In this model, assuming that the excitons in metastable state will diffuse and be trapped by QDs, and then emit fluorescence in QDs, a stretched-like exponential decay formula is derived as I(t)=At^({\beta}-1)e^(-(rt)^{\beta}), which can well describe the long lifetime decay curve with an analytical expression of average lifetime <{\tau}>=1/r{\Gamma}(1/{\beta}+1), where {\Gamma} is the Gamma function. Furthermore, based on the proposed three-level model, an expression of the second-order auto-correlation function g^2 (t) which can well fit the measured g^2 (t) curve is also obtained., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures