Improved heralded single-photon source with a photon-number-resolving superconducting nanowire detector

Abstract

Deterministic generation of single photons is essential for many quantum information technologies. A bulk optical nonlinearity emitting a photon pair, where the measurement of one of the photons heralds the presence of the other, is commonly used with the caveat that the single-photon emission rate is constrained due to a trade-off between multiphoton events and pair emission rate. Using an efficient and low noise photon-number-resolving superconducting nanowire detector we herald, in real time, a single photon at telecommunication wavelength. We perform a second-order photon correlation $g^2(0)$ measurement of the signal mode conditioned on the measured photon number of the idler mode for various pump powers and demonstrate an improvement of a heralded single-photon source. We develop an analytical model using a phase-space formalism that encompasses all multiphoton effects and relevant imperfections, such as loss and multiple Schmidt modes. We perform a maximum-likelihood fit to test the agreement of the model to the data and extract the best-fit mean photon number $\mu$ of the pair source for each pump power. A maximum reduction of $0.118\pm 0.012$ in the photon $g^2(0)$ correlation function at $\mu =0.327\pm 0.007$ is obtained, indicating a strong suppression of multiphoton emissions. For a fixed $g^2(0)=7e-3$, we increase the single pair generation probability by 25%. Our experiment, built using fiber-coupled and off-the-shelf components, delineates a path to engineering ideal sources of single photons.

Model and analysis integrated into main text. Corrected equations. 17 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (14)

• Photonic quantum technologies
• Integrated Photonic Quantum Technologies
• Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors: physics and applications
• Heralded Generation of Ultrafast Single Photons in Pure Quantum States
• Indistinguishable photons from separated silicon-vacancy centers in diamond
• Photon number resolution using a time-multiplexed single-photon detector
• Measuring Measurement: Theory and Practice
• Experimental generation of multi-photon Fock states
• An Efficient Integrated Two-Color Source for Heralded Single Photons
• Full analysis of multi-photon pair effects in spontaneous parametric down conversion based photonic quantum information processing
• An extremely low-noise heralded single-photon source: a breakthrough for quantum technologies
• Spectrally separable photon-pair generation in dispersion engineered thin-film lithium niobate
• Reducing $g^{(2)}(0)$ of a parametric down-conversion source via photon-number resolution with superconducting nanowire detectors
• Active Quenching of Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors

Cited by in corpus (13)

• GHz detection rates and dynamic photon-number resolution with superconducting nanowire arrays
• High-efficiency and fast photon-number resolving parallel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector
• Enhanced heralded single-photon source with a photon-number-resolving parallel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector
• Enhanced Detection Rate and High Photon-Number Efficiencies with a Scalable Parallel SNSPD
• How well can superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors resolve photon number?
• Superconducting wide strip photon detector with high critical current bank structure
• Heralded single-photon source based on superpositions of squeezed states
• Photonic quantum generative adversarial networks for classical data
• Minimizing resource overhead in fusion-based quantum computation using hybrid spin-photon devices
• Jitter in photon-number-resolved detection by superconducting nanowires
• Fundamental limits on determination of photon number statistics from measurements with multiplexed on/off detectors
• Practical considerations for assignment of photon numbers with SNSPDs
• A heralded single-photon source implemented with second-order nonlinear photonic crystals