On-demand generation of background-free single photons from a solid-state source

Abstract

True on-demand high-repetition-rate single-photon sources are highly sought after for quantum information processing applications. However, any coherently driven two-level quantum system suffers from a finite re-excitation probability under pulsed excitation, causing undesirable multi-photon emission. Here, we present a solid-state source of on-demand single photons yielding a raw second-order coherence of g((2)) (0) = (7.5 +/- 1.6) x 10(-5) without any background subtraction or data processing. To this date, this is the lowest value of g((2)) (0) Peported for any single-photon source even compared to the previously reported best background subtracted values. We achieve this result on GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots embedded in a low-Q planar cavity by employing (i) a two-photon excitation process and (ii) a filtering and detection setup featuring two superconducting single-photon detectors with ultralow dark-count rates of (0.0056 +/- 0.0007) s(-1) and (0.017 +/- 0.001) s(-1), respectively. Re-excitation processes are dramatically suppressed by (i), while (ii) removes false coincidences resulting in a negligibly low noise floor. (C) 2018 Author(s).