Phys.org December 9, 2020
An on-demand and truly scalable source of indistinguishable single photons is the essential component enabling high-fidelity photonic quantum operations. A main challenge is to overcome noise and decoherence processes to reach the steep benchmarks on generation efficiency and photon indistinguishability required for scaling up the source. An international team of researchers (Denmark, Germany) has developed a single-photon source featuring near-unity indistinguishability using a quantum dot in an “on-chip” planar nanophotonic waveguide circuit. The device produces long strings of >100 single photons without any observable decrease in the mutual indistinguishability between photons. They were able to generate 122 million photons per second corresponding to an on-chip source efficiency of 84%. These specifications of the single-photon source are benchmarked for boson sampling and found to enable scaling into the regime of quantum advantage. They have the tool that makes it possible to build a quantum simulator that can outperform a classical computer…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Illustration of the single-photon source device. Credit: Science Advances 09 Dec 2020: Vol. 6, no. 50, eabc8268