High purity bright single photon source.

Using cavity-enhanced non-degenerate parametric down-conversion, we have built a frequency tunable source of heralded single photons with a narrow bandwidth of 8 MHz, making it compatible with atomic quantum memories. The photon state is 70% pure single photon as characterized by a tomographic measurement and reconstruction of the quantum state, revealing a clearly negative Wigner function. Furthermore, it has a spectral brightness of ~1,500 photons/s per MHz bandwidth, making it one of the brightest single photon sources available. We also investigate the correlation function of the down-converted fields using a combination of two very distinct detection methods; photon counting and homodyne measurement.

[1]  L. Orozco,et al.  Time-dependent electric field fluctuations at the subphoton level , 2002 .

[2]  J. Cirac,et al.  Experimental demonstration of quantum memory for light , 2004, Nature.

[3]  W. Moerner,et al.  Single photons on demand from a single molecule at room temperature , 2000, Nature.

[4]  Z. Y. Ou,et al.  Optical parametric oscillator far below threshold: Experiment versus theory , 2000 .

[5]  K. Mølmer,et al.  Single-photon-state generation from a continuous-wave nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator , 2006, quant-ph/0611268.

[6]  D. Matsukevich,et al.  Deterministic single photons via conditional quantum evolution. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[7]  R. Brouri,et al.  Photon antibunching in the fluorescence of individual color centers in diamond. , 2000, Optics letters.

[8]  P Grangier,et al.  Controlled Single-Photon Emission from a Single Trapped Two-Level Atom , 2005, Science.

[9]  Ou,et al.  Probability distribution of photoelectric currents in photodetection processes and its connection to the measurement of a quantum state. , 1995, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

[10]  K Mølmer,et al.  Generation of a superposition of odd photon number states for quantum information networks. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[11]  P. Petroff,et al.  A quantum dot single-photon turnstile device. , 2000, Science.

[12]  Gilles Brassard,et al.  Quantum Cryptography , 2005, Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security.

[13]  Mayer,et al.  Stable solid-state source of single photons , 2000, Physical review letters.

[14]  Jeffrey H Shapiro,et al.  Time-bin-modulated biphotons from cavity-enhanced down-conversion. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[15]  Hong,et al.  Experimental realization of a localized one-photon state. , 1986, Physical review letters.

[16]  A. I. Lvovsky,et al.  Iterative maximum-likelihood reconstruction in quantum homodyne tomography , 2003, quant-ph/0311097.

[17]  Takayoshi Kobayashi,et al.  Polarization-entangled mode-locked photons from cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion , 2004 .

[18]  Eugene S. Polzik.  Quantum teleportation between light and matter , 2007, QELS 2007.

[19]  Polarization-controlled single photons. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[20]  Michael Pepper,et al.  Electrically Driven Single-Photon Source , 2001, Science.

[21]  J. Rarity,et al.  High brightness single mode source of correlated photon pairs using a photonic crystal fiber. , 2005, Optics express.

[22]  A. D. Boozer,et al.  Deterministic Generation of Single Photons from One Atom Trapped in a Cavity , 2004, Science.

[23]  J. D. Franson,et al.  Heralding single photons from pulsed parametric down-conversion , 2005 .

[24]  A. Lvovsky,et al.  Quantum state reconstruction of the single-photon Fock state. , 2001, Physical Review Letters.

[25]  Philippe Grangier,et al.  Quantum homodyne tomography of a two-photon Fock state. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[26]  T. Ralph,et al.  Measuring photon antibunching from continuous variable sideband squeezing. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[27]  Jelena Vucković,et al.  Efficient source of single photons: a single quantum dot in a micropost microcavity. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[28]  Shih,et al.  New high-intensity source of polarization-entangled photon pairs. , 1995, Physical review letters.

[29]  Alessandro Zavatta,et al.  Tomographic reconstruction of the single-photon Fock state by high-frequency homodyne detection , 2004, quant-ph/0406090.

[30]  E. Knill,et al.  A scheme for efficient quantum computation with linear optics , 2001, Nature.

[31]  Jonathan Simon,et al.  References and Notes Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Figs. S1 to S12 Table S1 Movies S1 to S4 Soundfile S1 References a High-brightness Source of Narrowband, Identical-photon Pairs , 2022 .

[32]  Jörg Schmiedmayer,et al.  Deterministic and storable single-photon source based on a quantum memory. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[33]  Herbert Walther,et al.  Continuous generation of single photons with controlled waveform in an ion-trap cavity system , 2004, Nature.

[34]  Christine Silberhorn,et al.  Efficient conditional preparation of high-fidelity single photon states for fiber-optic quantum networks. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[35]  E. Polzik,et al.  Narrow-band frequency tunable light source of continuous quadrature entanglement , 2002, quant-ph/0205015.

[36]  Reid,et al.  Correlations in nondegenerate parametric oscillation. II. Below threshold results. , 1990, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.