Enhancement of a silicon waveguide single photon source by temporal multiplexing

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a silicon waveguide-based single photon source with temporal multiplexing, significantly increasing output probability while maintaining high single-photon purity, advancing photonic quantum technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated temporal multiplexing scheme using silicon waveguides and low-loss components to enhance single photon source efficiency.

Findings

Output probability increased by a factor of 4.5

Maintains low g^{(2)}(0) = 0.01 indicating high purity

Uses low-loss fibre switch and loop architecture

Abstract

Efficient generation of single photons is one of the key challenges of building photonic quantum technology, such as quantum computers and long-distance quantum networks. Photon source multiplexing -- where successful pair generation is heralded by the detection of one of the photons, and its partner is routed to a single mode output -- has long been known to offer a concrete solution, with output probability tending toward unity as loss is reduced. Here, we present a temporally multiplexed integrated single photon source based on a silicon waveguide and a low-loss fibre switch and loop architecture, which achieves enhancement of the single photon output probability of $4.5 \pm 0.5$, while retaining $g^{(2)}(0) = 0.01$.