Highly directional single photon source concept is expected to lead to a significant progress in producing compact, cheap, and efficient sources of quantum information bits for future applications
Quantum information science and technology has emerged as a new paradigm for dramatically faster computation and secure communication in the 21st century. At the heart of any quantum system is the most basic building block, the quantum bit or qbit, which carries the quantum information that can be transferred and processed (this is the quantum analogue of the bit used in current information systems).
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Ref: Highly Directional Room-Temperature Single Photon Device. Nano Letters (10 March 2016) | DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b00082
ABSTRACT
One of the most important challenges in modern quantum optical applications is the demonstration of efficient, scalable, on-chip single photon sources, which can operate at room temperature. In this paper we demonstrate a room-temperature single photon source based on a single colloidal nanocrystal quantum dot positioned inside a circular bulls-eye shaped hybrid metal-dielectric nanoantenna. Experimental results show that 20% of the photons are emitted into a very low numerical aperture (NA < 0.25), a 20-fold improvement over a free-standing quantum dot, and with a probability of more than 70% for a single photon emission. With an NA = 0.65 more than 35% of the single photon emission is collected. The single photon purity is limited only by emission from the metal, an obstacle that can be bypassed with careful design and fabrication. The concept presented here can be extended to many other types of quantum emitters. Such a device paves a promising route for a high purity, high efficiency, on-chip single photon source operating at room temperature.