Characterization of the multimode nature of single-photon sources based on spontaneous parametric down conversion
Abstract: Single-photon sources are necessary components for many prospective quantum technologies. One candidate for a single-photon source is spontaneous parametric down conversion combined with a heralding photon detection. The heralded light pulse from such a source, is typically treated as single-mode, this treatment, however, is incomplete. We develop a full multimode description based on the exact Bogoliubov treatment of the down conversion process. We then provide a perturbative and effective treatment, which illustrates the most important physical mechanisms and permits analytical estimates of the success probability and purity of single-photon states under practical heralding conditions, both without relying on the precise detection time of the heralding photon and when accepting photons only in a narrow window around the time of the detection. This permits us to characterize the emitted light under three different assumptions for the pump pulse. For spontaneous parametric down conversion with a very short pump pulse, we find the single-mode description to be accurate, while for longer pump pulses and continuous pumping, a multimode description is necessary. Our findings can be used to guide the design of quantum information protocols based on heralded single-photon sources, as their performance may depend on the multimode nature of the sources.
- A. Aspect, The Second Quantum Revolution: From Basic Concepts to Quantum Technologies, in Photonic Quantum Technologies, edited by M. Benyoucef (Wiley, 2023) 1st ed., pp. 7–30.
- H. J. Kimble, The quantum internet, Nature 453, 1023 (2008).
- D. E. Browne and T. Rudolph, Resource-Efficient Linear Optical Quantum Computation, Physical Review Letters 95, 010501 (2005).
- C. K. Hong and L. Mandel, Theory of parametric frequency down conversion of light, Physical Review A 31, 2409 (1985).
- C. K. Hong and L. Mandel, Experimental realization of a localized one-photon state, Physical Review Letters 56, 58 (1986).
- C. C. Gerry and P. Knight, Introductory quantum optics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ; New York, 2005).
- A. E. B. Nielsen and K. Mølmer, Multimode analysis of the light emitted from a pulsed optical parametric oscillator, Physical Review A 76, 033832 (2007a).
- A. E. B. Nielsen and K. Mølmer, Photon number states generated from a continuous-wave light source, Physical Review A 75, 043801 (2007b).
- K. Mølmer, Non-Gaussian states from continuous-wave Gaussian light sources, Physical Review A 73, 063804 (2006).
- C. W. Gardiner and M. J. Collett, Input and output in damped quantum systems: Quantum stochastic differential equations and the master equation, Physical Review A 31, 3761 (1985).
- S. L. Braunstein, Squeezing as an irreducible resource, Physical Review A 71, 055801 (2005).
- L. Jiang, J. M. Taylor, and M. D. Lukin, Fast and robust approach to long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles, Physical Review A 76, 012301 (2007).
- Y. Chang and A. S. Sørensen, In Preperation.
- C. K. Hong, Z. Y. Ou, and L. Mandel, Measurement of subpicosecond time intervals between two photons by interference, Physical Review Letters 59, 2044 (1987).
- A. M. Brańczyk, Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference (2017), arXiv:1711.00080 [quant-ph].
- E. M. Gonzalez-Ruiz, Single-photon sources as a key resource for developing a global quantum network, Ph.D. thesis, University of Copenhagen (2023), oCLC: 1380745748.
Paper Prompts
Sign up for free to create and run prompts on this paper using GPT-5.
Top Community Prompts
Collections
Sign up for free to add this paper to one or more collections.