Silicon Photonic Entangled Photon-Pair and Heralded Single Photon Generation with CAR $>$ 12,000 and $g^{(2)}(0)<$ 0.006

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates high-quality entangled photon pairs and heralded single photons at 1550 nm using a silicon microring resonator, achieving record-high metrics comparable to traditional nonlinear media.

Contribution

It presents the first silicon photonic device to reach CAR > 12,000 and g^{(2)}(0) < 0.006, surpassing previous silicon-based sources and matching performance of crystal, glass, and fiber systems.

Findings

High spectral brightness of photon pairs.

Record-high CAR and low g^{(2)}(0) metrics.

Performance comparable to traditional nonlinear media.

Abstract

We report measurements of time-frequency entangled photon pairs and heralded single photons at 1550~nm wavelengths generated using a microring resonator pumped optically by a diode laser. Along with a high spectral brightness of pair generation, the conventional metrics used to describe performance, such as Coincidences-to-Accidentals Ratio (CAR), conditional self-correlation [$g^{(2)}(0)$], two-photon energy-time {F}ranson interferometric visibility etc. are shown to reach a high-performance regime not yet achieved by silicon photonics, and attained previously only by crystal, glass and fiber-based pair-generation devices.