An efficient source of single photons: a single quantum dot in a micropost microcavity

Abstract

injection current. Pulsed electrical injection leads to pulsed emision from the dot, with a single photon in each pulse, provided that the pulse width is much less than the exciton lifetime. The second order correlation function recorded for theXlinewithapulsewidthof400ps(Fig,ZB(i)) shows a strongly suppressed peak at zero time delay, indicating a strong suppression of the multi-photon emission pulses from the dot. This contrasts with the pair correlation recorded for the wetting layer electroluminescence (Fig.

Photonic Crystals

“…Indeed, not only can they be pumped relatively easily using electrical injection (Yuan 2002), but optical microcavities can further be used in order to adjust their emission properties and collect more efficiently their emission (see Section 7.2). A single-mode single photon source has been realised by placing a single InAs quantum dot inside a GaAs/AlAs pillar microcavity (Moreau 2001b;Santori 2002). When the quantum dot is in spectral resonance with the cavity mode, it undergoes a strong Purcell effect (see Section 7.1.2), and its spontaneous emission is very preferentially funnelled into this mode.…”

Quantum networks

“…Even though experimental demonstrations of QKD employing these techniques have been achieved, true on-demand single photon sources are desired in order to make QKD efficient and unconditionally secure. Development of single photon sources is currently being pursued by many research groups in various physical systems, such as semiconductor structures [33,45] color centers in diamond [6], and cavity quantum electrodynamics [25,29].…”

Improved antibunching by using high-excitation pulses from a single semiconductor quantum dot—a theoretical study

“…Temporally well-separated photons were also used for first proof-of-principle experiments of the quantum repeater. Single semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have proven to possess a variety of qualities that make them excellent sources of single [2,3] and entangled photons [4][5][6] on demand, such as low jitter, high temperature stability, tunable emission frequency (especially in the range of telecommunication networks), and fast repetition rates. QDs can be embedded into sophisticated heterostructure designs to enable electric excitation as well as spontaneous emission enhancement by using optical microresonators, leading to even faster repetition rates of the order of picoseconds.…”