Controlling Purity, Indistinguishability and Quantum Yield of Incoherently Pumped Two-Level System by Spectral Filters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spectral filters can be used to control the purity, indistinguishability, and quantum yield of photons emitted by a two-level quantum system under incoherent pumping, with implications for quantum information applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates the ability of spectral filters to enhance photon indistinguishability and control autocorrelation, revealing the dependence on pump duration and system response time.

Findings

Narrow spectral filters increase photon indistinguishability.

Long pump pulses cause autocorrelation to reflect pump statistics.

Short pump pulses can preserve single-photon properties with sub-lifetime spectral filters.

Abstract

Dephasing processes significantly impact the performance of deterministic single-photon sources. Dephasing broadens the spectral line and suppresses the indistinguishability of the emitted photons, which is undesirable for many applications, primarily for quantum computing. We consider a light emitted by a two-level system with a pulsed incoherent pump in the presence of the spectral filter. The spectral filter allows control of the second-order autocorrelation function, indistinguishability, and quantum yield. We show that narrow spectral filters can increase the indistinguishability of the emitted light while undermining the quantum yield. The influence of the spectral filter on the second-order correlation function depends on the duration of the pump. When the pumping pulse is long compared to the lifetime of the two-level system, the narrow spectral filters lead to a rapid increase in the second-order autocorrelation function. In this limit, the statistics of the light from the two-level system inherit the statistics of the incoherent pump. In the case of the short duration of the pump pulse, it is possible to preserve single-photon properties to some degree for the sub-lifetime width of the spectral filter. Moreover, when the light emitted by the single-photon source is used to control a quantum system, e.g., cavity, the single-photon properties of the light manifest themselves differently, depending on the response time of the quantum system. In particular, in the case of long response time, the spectral filter with sub-lifetime width can provide the near-zero second-order autocorrelation function.