Resolving Three Single-Photon Emitters By Only Detecting Third-Order Correlation Functions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to resolve multiple single-photon emitters by analyzing only the highest order correlation functions, surpassing classical diffraction limits and revealing spatial distributions.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that high order correlation functions contain all necessary information to resolve multiple emitters, especially when more than two, providing a new approach to surpass diffraction limits.

Findings

Highest order correlation functions contain emitter parameters

Spatial distribution deduced from high order correlations for multiple emitters

Method surpasses classical diffraction limit using high order correlations

Abstract

Rayleigh criterion has been continuously broken through with modern detecting instruments, many methods on resolving two emitters below the classical diffraction limit has been developed, one of these methods is detecting high order correlation functions of the emitters. We propose a method to resolve the single-photon emitters with only detecting the highest order correlation functions. We find that the variables that characterize the emitters are contained in the highest order correlation functions. Especially when there are more than two emitters, the spatial distribution of the emitters can be deduced only from the highest order correlation functions, which gives a new vision and a new method on beating classical diffraction limit using high order correlation functions.