Display Settings:

Format

Send to:

Choose Destination
We are sorry, but NCBI web applications do not support your browser and may not function properly. More information
    Nature. 2002 Oct 10;419(6907):594-7.

    Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device.

    Source

    Quantum Entanglement Project, ICORP, JST, E. L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4088, USA. chars@stanford.edu

    Abstract

    Single-photon sources have recently been demonstrated using a variety of devices, including molecules, mesoscopic quantum wells, colour centres, trapped ions and semiconductor quantum dots. Compared with a Poisson-distributed source of the same intensity, these sources rarely emit two or more photons in the same pulse. Numerous applications for single-photon sources have been proposed in the field of quantum information, but most--including linear-optical quantum computation--also require consecutive photons to have identical wave packets. For a source based on a single quantum emitter, the emitter must therefore be excited in a rapid or deterministic way, and interact little with its surrounding environment. Here we test the indistinguishability of photons emitted by a semiconductor quantum dot in a microcavity through a Hong-Ou-Mandel-type two-photon interference experiment. We find that consecutive photons are largely indistinguishable, with a mean wave-packet overlap as large as 0.81, making this source useful in a variety of experiments in quantum optics and quantum information.

    Comment in

    PMID:
    12374958
    [PubMed]

      Supplemental Content

      Icon for Nature Publishing Group

      Save items

      Recent activity

      Your browsing activity is empty.

      Activity recording is turned off.

      Turn recording back on

      See more...
      Write to the Help Desk