Entangled photons on demand: Erasing which-path information with sidebands

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to erase which-path information in entangled photon pairs emitted from quantum dots by using energy level modulation, significantly enhancing entanglement quality.

Contribution

The authors introduce a modulation technique that creates sidebands to erase which-path information, improving entanglement in quantum dot photon sources.

Findings

Entanglement can be substantially increased through spectral filtering.

Energy level modulation introduces new decay paths with sidebands.

The method achieves near-maximal entanglement with minimal efficiency loss.

Abstract

The biexciton cascade in a quantum dot can be used to generate entangled-photon pairs rapidly and deterministically (on demand). However, due to a large fine-structure splitting between intermediate exciton energy levels, which-path information encoded in the frequencies of emitted photon pairs leads to a small degree of entanglement. Here we show that this information can be efficiently erased by modulating the exciton and biexciton energy levels, giving rise to new decay paths through additional sidebands. The resulting degree of entanglement is substantial, and can be made maximal through spectral filtering, with only a nominal reduction in collection efficiency.