Low-noise heralded single photons from cascaded downconversion

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that cascaded downconversion can significantly improve the quality of heralded single-photon sources by reducing dark counts and enhancing the second-order correlation function, which is crucial for quantum applications.

Contribution

The study introduces a cascaded downconversion scheme that enhances heralded single-photon source performance by reducing dark counts and improving $g^{(2)}$ without increasing pump power.

Findings

Cascaded downconversion reduces dark count effects.

Improved $g^{(2)}$ can be achieved with sufficient second downconversion efficiency.

Minimal $g^{(2)}$ remains stable over a range of pump intensities.

Abstract

Heralded single photon sources are often implemented using spontaneous parametric downconversion, but their quality can be restricted by optical loss, double pair emission and detector dark counts. Here, we show that the performance of such sources can be improved using cascaded downconversion, by providing a second trigger signal to herald the presence of a single photon, thereby reducing the effects of detector dark counts. We find that for a setup with fixed detectors, an improved heralded second-order correlation function $g^{(2)}$ can always be achieved with cascaded downconversion given sufficient efficiency for the second downconversion, even for equal single-photon production rates. Furthermore, the minimal $g^{(2)}$ value is unchanged for a large range in pump beam intensity. These results are interesting for applications where achieving low, stable values of $g^{(2)}$ is of primary importance.