Robust excitation of C-band quantum dots for quantum communication

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that longitudinal acoustic phonon-assisted pumping of C-band quantum dots enhances quantum communication by improving security and stability, crucial for practical quantum internet infrastructure.

Contribution

It experimentally shows how tuning pump energy and spectral detuning in LA-pumped quantum dots improves secure communication rates and emission stability at telecom wavelengths.

Findings

Enhanced quantum communication rates with optimized pump parameters.

Stable emission statistics despite environmental fluctuations.

Implications for practical quantum network implementations.

Abstract

Building a quantum internet requires efficient and reliable quantum hardware, from photonic sources to quantum repeaters and detectors, ideally operating at telecommunication wavelengths. Thanks to their high brightness and single-photon purity, quantum dot (QD) sources hold the promise to achieve high communication rates for quantum-secured network applications. Furthermore, it was recently shown that excitation schemes, such as longitudinal acoustic phonon-assisted (LA) pumping, provide security benefits by scrambling the coherence between the emitted photon-number states. In this work, we investigate further advantages of LA-pumped quantum dots with emission in the telecom C-band as a core hardware component of the quantum internet. We experimentally demonstrate how varying the pump energy and spectral detuning with respect to the excitonic transition can improve quantum-secured communication rates and provide stable emission statistics regardless of network-environment fluctuations. These findings have significant implications for general implementations of QD single-photon sources in practical quantum communication networks.