Kiyotaka Hammura

“Plug and play” single-photon sources

The authors report a “plug and play” source of single photons, with full integration to a single-mode optical fiber. One end of the fiber is attached to the top of an InGaAs∕GaAs quantum dot wafer. The other end is connected via a wavelength-division multiplexing system to two separate fibers: one for carrying excitation light and the other for emitted light. A Hanbury-Brown and Twiss [Nature (London) 77, 27 (1956)] measurement was performed on the emission from single excitons recombining in the quantum dots. A second-order correlation function at zero time delay of approximately 0.01 indicates a nearly ideal source of single photons. The maximum variation of peak position over 24days is less than 0.1nm.

Plug and play single photons at 1.3 μm approaching gigahertz operation

We report a “plug and play” single photon source, fully integrated with an optical fiber, emitting at 1.3μm. Micropillars were patterned on a single layer InAs quantum dot wafer to guarantee a single pillar per fiber core. The single exciton peak filtered with a tunable optical filter was fed to a Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer, and the second order correlation function at zero delay was less than 0.5, indicating single photon emission. The measured decay dynamics under double-pulse excitation show that the single photon device can be operated at speeds greater than 0.5GHz.

Derivation of the sensitivity of a Geiger mode avalanche photodiode detector from a given efficiency for quantum key distribution experiments

The detection sensitivity (DS) of a commercial single-photon receiver based on an InGaAs gate-mode avalanche photodiode is estimated. The installation of a digital-blanking system (DBS) to reduce dark current differentiates between the DS, which is the efficiency of the detector during its open-gate/active state, and the total/overall detection efficiency (DE). Using numerical simulations it is found that the average number of light-pulses blanked by DBS following a registered pulse is 0.333. The DS is estimated at 0.216, which can be used for estimating the DE for an arbitrary photon arrival rate and gating frequency of the receiver.