Abstract

Heralded single photons produced on a silicon chip represent an integrated photon source solution for scalable photonic quantum technologies. The key limitation of such sources is their non-deterministic nature introduced by the stochastic spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) process. Active spatial and temporal multiplexing can improve this by enhancing the single-photon rate without degrading the quantum signal-to-noise ratio. Here, taking advantage of the broad bandwidth of SFWM in a silicon nanowire, we experimentally demonstrate heralded single-photon generation from a silicon nanowire pumped by time and wavelength division multiplexed pulses. We show a $90\pm 5\%$ enhancement on the heralded photon rate at the cost of only $14\pm 2\%$ reduction to the signal-to-noise ratio, close to the performance found using only time division multiplexed pulses. As single-photon events are distributed to multiple wavelength channels, this new scheme overcomes the saturation limit of avalanche single-photon detectors and will improve the ultimate performance of such photon sources.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

Time-multiplexed heralded single-photon source

Fumihiro Kaneda, Bradley G. Christensen, Jia Jun Wong, Hee Su Park, Kevin T. McCusker, and Paul G. Kwiat
Optica 2(12) 1010-1013 (2015)

Bidirectional multiplexing of heralded single photons from a silicon chip

C. Xiong, T. D. Vo, M. J. Collins, J. Li, T. F. Krauss, M. J. Steel, A. S. Clark, and B. J. Eggleton
Opt. Lett. 38(23) 5176-5179 (2013)

Transmission of O-band wavelength-division-multiplexed heralded photons over a noise-corrupted optical fiber channel

Mao Tong Liu and Han Chuen Lim
Opt. Express 21(25) 30358-30369 (2013)

High repetition rate correlated photon pair generation in integrated silicon nanowires

Xiang Zhang, Bryn Bell, Mark Pelusi, Jiakun He, Wei Geng, Yunchuan Kong, Philipp Zhang, Chunle Xiong, and Benjamin J. Eggleton
Appl. Opt. 56(30) 8420-8424 (2017)

Terahertz-bandwidth switching of heralded single photons

Connor Kupchak, Jennifer Erskine, Duncan England, and Benjamin Sussman
Opt. Lett. 44(6) 1427-1430 (2019)