Bright nanoscale source of deterministic entangled photon pairs violating Bell's inequality

TL;DR

This paper presents a bright, nanowire-based quantum light source that efficiently produces polarization-entangled photon pairs, strongly violating Bell's inequality, with potential applications in secure quantum communication.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a highly efficient, deterministic entangled photon source using a symmetric quantum dot in a nanowire waveguide, achieving record-high photon pair collection rates and Bell inequality violation without post-selection.

Findings

Collected ~200 kHz entangled photon pairs under 80 MHz pulsed excitation.

Achieved Bell inequality violation with S_CHSH > 2 by up to 9.3 standard deviations.

Enhanced entanglement fidelity (F=0.817) using quasi-resonant excitation, enabling Bell violation without post-selection.

Abstract

Global, secure quantum channels will require efficient distribution of entangled photons. Long distance, low-loss interconnects can only be realized using photons as quantum information carriers. However, a quantum light source combining both high qubit fidelity and on-demand bright emission has proven elusive. Here, we show a bright photonic nanostructure generating polarization-entangled photon-pairs that strongly violates Bell's inequality. A highly symmetric InAsP quantum dot generating entangled photons is encapsulated in a tapered nanowire waveguide to ensure directional emission and efficient light extraction. We collect $\sim$200 kHz entangled photon-pairs at the first lens under 80\,MHz pulsed excitation, which is a 20 times enhancement as compared to a bare quantum dot without a photonic nanostructure. The performed Bell test using the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality reveals a clear violation ($S_{\text{CHSH}}>2$) by up to 9.3 standard deviations. By using a novel quasi-resonant excitation scheme at the wurtzite InP nanowire resonance to reduce multi-photon emission, the entanglement fidelity ($F=0.817\,\pm\,0.002$) is further enhanced without temporal post-selection, allowing for the violation of Bell's inequality in the rectilinear-circular basis by 25 standard deviations. Our results on nanowire-based quantum light sources highlight their potential application in secure data communication utilizing measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution and quantum repeater protocols.