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Single self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots are a promising solid-state quantum technology, with which vacuum Rabi splitting, single-photon-level nonlinearities, and bright, pure, and indistinguishable single-photon generation having been demonstrated. For such achievements, nanofabrication is used to create structures in which the quantum dot preferentially interacts with strongly-confined optical modes. An open question is the extent to which such nanofabrication may also have an adverse influence, through the creation of traps and surface states that could induce blinking, spectral diffusion, and dephasing. Here, we use photoluminescence imaging to locate the positions of single InAs/GaAs quantum dots with respect to alignment marks with < 5 nm uncertainty, allowing us to measure their behavior before and after fabrication. We track the quantum dot emission linewidth and photon statistics as a function of distance from an etched surface, and find that the linewidth is significantly broadened (up to several GHz) for etched surfaces within a couple hundred nanometers of the quantum dot. However, we do not observe appreciable reduction of the quantum dot radiative efficiency due to blinking. We also show that atomic layer deposition can stabilize spectral diffusion of the quantum dot emission, and partially recover its linewidth., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

We report optical positioning single quantum dots (QDs) in planar cavity with an average position uncertainty $<$20 nm using an optimized two-color photoluminescence imaging technique. We create single-photon sources based on these QDs in determined micropillar cavities. The brightness of the QD fluorescence is greatly enhanced on resonance with the fundamental mode of the cavity, leading to an high extraction efficiency of 68%$\pm$6% into a lens with numerical aperture of 0.65, and simultaneously exhibiting low multi-photon probability ($g^{2}(0)$=0.144$\pm$0.012) at this collection efficiency., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

Quantum repeaters are critical components for distributing entanglement over long distances in presence of unavoidable optical losses during transmission. Stimulated by Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller protocol, many improved quantum-repeater protocols based on quantum memories have been proposed, which commonly focus on the entanglement-distribution rate. Among these protocols, the elimination of multi-photons (multi-photon-pairs) and the use of multimode quantum memory are demonstrated to have the ability to greatly improve the entanglement-distribution rate. Here, we demonstrate the storage of deterministic single photons emitted from a quantum dot in a polarization-maintaining solid-state quantum memory; in addition, multi-temporal-mode memory with $1$, $20$ and $100$ narrow single-photon pulses is also demonstrated. Multi-photons are eliminated, and only one photon at most is contained in each pulse. Moreover, the solid-state properties of both sub-systems make this configuration more stable and easier to be scalable. Our work will be helpful in the construction of efficient quantum repeaters based on all-solid-state devices, Comment: Published version, including supplementary material

The measurement of correlations between different degrees of freedom is an important, but in general extremely difficult task in many applications of quantum mechanics. Here, we report an all-optical experimental detection and quantification of quantum correlations between the polarization and the frequency degrees of freedom of single photons by means of local operations acting only on the polarization degree of freedom. These operations only require experimental control over an easily accessible two-dimensional subsystem, despite handling strongly mixed quantum states comprised of a continuum of orthogonal frequency states. Our experiment thus represents a photonic realization of a scheme for the local detection of quantum correlations in a truly infinite-dimensional continuous-variable system, which excludes an efficient finite-dimensional truncation.

An upper bound between the information gain and state reversibility of weak measurement was first developed by Y. K. Cheong and S. W. Lee [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 150402 (2012)]. Their results are valid for arbitrary d-level quantum systems. In light of the commonly used qubit system in quantum information, a sharp tradeoff relation can be obtained. In this letter, this tradeoff relation is experimentally verified with polarization encoded single photons from a quantum dot. Furthermore, a complete traversal of weak measurement operators is realized, and the mapping to the least upper bound of this tradeoff relation is obtained. Our results complement the theoretical work and provide a universal ruler for the characterization of weak measurements.

Excitonic polaron is directly demonstrated for the first time in InAs/GaAs quantum dots with photoluminescence method. A new peak ($s'$) below the ground state of exciton ($s$) comes out as the temperature varies from 4.2 K to 285 K, and a huge anticrossing energy of 31 meV between $s'$ and $s$ is observed at 225 K, which can only be explained by the formation of excitonic polaron. The results also provide a strong evidence for the invalidity of Huang-Rhys formulism in dealing with carrier-longitudinal optical phonon interaction in quantum dot. Instead, we propose a simple two-band model, and it fits the experimental data quite well. The reason for the finding of the anticrossing is also discussed., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures