Heralded temporal shaping of single photons enabled by entanglement

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable, lossless method to produce single photons with arbitrary temporal shapes using entangled photon pairs and non-local modulation, advancing quantum information and control.

Contribution

It presents a novel non-local temporal shaping technique for single photons using entanglement and heralding, enabling broad-range, tunable photon shaping.

Findings

Achieves arbitrary photon temporal shaping via entanglement and modulation.

Supports broad temporal durations from femtoseconds to microseconds.

Enables scalable, lossless photon shaping for quantum applications.

Abstract

We propose a method to produce pure single photons with an arbitrary designed temporal shape in a heralded, lossless and scalable way. As the indispensable resource, the method uses pairs of time-energy entangled photons. To accomplish the shaping, one photon of a pair undergoes temporal modulation according to the desired shape. Subsequent frequency-resolving detection of the photon heralds its entangled counterpart in a pure quantum state with a temporal shape non-locally affected by the modulation. We found conditions for the shape of the heralded photon to reproduce the modulation function. The method can be implemented with various sources of time-energy entangled photons. In particular, using entangled photons from the parametric down-conversion the method enables generation of pure photons with tunable shape within unprecedentedly broad range of temporal durations - from tenths of femtoseconds to microseconds. Proposed shaping of single photons will push forward implementation of scalable multidimensional quantum information protocols, efficient photon-matter coupling and quantum control at the level of single quanta.