Photon number statistics of NV centre emission

Abstract

Optical sources that deterministically produce single photons with a high suppression of multi-photon emission and a negligible background component are promising candidates for standard sources for quantum metrology, quantum communication and foundations of quantum mechanics. In this paper, the photon number distribution of non-classical light emitted by nitrogen vacancy (NV) centres in nano-diamonds is studied by three different experimental techniques. The photon number resolving transition edge sensor (TES) detector and the On/Off detection method are applied to determine the diagonal elements of the optical density matrix. From the data measured by the two methods the second order correlation function at time delay zero is calculated and compared with the g 2 (0)-values obtained by Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometric measurements. Among the g 2 (0)-values evaluated with the three techniques, we found good agreement in the results for a single photon emitter with a g 2 (0)-value close to zero and a multi-photon source with a g 2 (0)-value of approximately 0.5.

Fabrication and Characterization of Fast TESs With Small Area for Single Photon Counting

“…The response time of single and double photons differ by less than 10%. The speeds of the TESs are comparable, in spite of the big difference of areas, as predicted from equation(2). The thermal time constant C e /G is calculated to be about 900 ns, which is consistent with data reported in[13].The inductance of the circuit (SQUID and wirings) is estimated by the electrical time constant equation[12]:for TES (A) results L = 47.85 nH(R = 0.34 Ω) and for TES (B) is 75 nH (R = 1 Ω).…”

“…The equation (2) shows that faster TESs can be obtained by increasing the operating temperature T 0 and that volume has no effect on the speed of the TES.…”

“…T RANSITION edge sensors with high energy resolution from visible to NIR spectral range have been realized in the last years [1] for experiments where the capability of discriminating the number of photons is crucial, like in single photon source characterizations [2] and in quantum information applications [3], [4].…”

Incoherent on-off keying with classical and non-classical light

“…In the latter expression we denoted as µ = n the mean photon number in the non-zero pulse and recalled the standard definition of the normalized second-order intensity correlation function at zero delay g (2) = :n 2 : / n 2 [10,11]. The approximation introduced in Eq.…”

Single-photon emitters based on NIR color centers in diamond coupled with solid immersion lenses

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Diamond is a promising platform for the development of single-photon emitters, due to a remarkable variety of luminescent defects 8,9 with appealing emission properties combined with the broad spectral transparency of the hosting crystal structure. The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NVÀ) complex had a prominent role in the development of the¯rst diamond-based single-photon emitters [10][11][12] due to its abundance, quantum e±ciency and well understood electronic transition structure.…”