SINGLE PHOTON SOURCE

摘要

A single photon source comprises an atom-like emitter (18), such as a quantum dot or a colour centre, and a high-Q optical cavity. The atom-like emitter (18) is triggered to emit a single photon via excitation into a higher excited state (16), relaxation into to an emitting state (14), and decay to the groundstate (12) via spontaneous emission of a photon into the optical cavity. Timing jitter is decreased by keeping the emitter (18) off-resonance with the cavity during the relaxation phase (eg, via Stark detuning), and bringing it back into to resonance with the cavity after a characteristic delay time. This improves the indistinguishability between members of a train of emitted photons.