Active temporal and spatial multiplexing of photons

Gabriel Mendoza, Raffaele Santagati, K J W Munns, Lizzy Hemsley, Mateusz Piekarek, Enrique Martin Lopez, Graham David Marshall, Damien Bonneau, Mark G Thompson, Jeremy L O'Brien

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

66 Citations (Scopus)
468 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The maturation of many photonic technologies from individual components to next-generation system-level circuits will require exceptional active control of complex states of light. A prime example is in quantum photonic technology: while single-photon processes are often probabilistic, it has been shown in theory that rapid and adaptive feedforward operations are sufficient to enable scalability. Here, we use simple “off-the-shelf” optical components to demonstrate active multiplexing—adaptive rerouting to single modes—of eight single-photon “bins” from a heralded source. Unlike other possible implementations, which can be costly in terms of resources or temporal delays, our new configuration exploits the benefits of both time and space degrees of freedom, enabling a significant increase in the single-photon emission probability. This approach is likely to be employed in future near-deterministic photon multiplexers with expected improvements in integrated quantum photonic technology.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)127-132
Number of pages6
JournalOptica
Volume3
Issue number2
Early online date29 Jan 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2016

Structured keywords

  • QETLabs

Keywords

  • (270.5290) Photon statistics
  • (270.5585) Quantum information and processing

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Active temporal and spatial multiplexing of photons'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
  • Photonic quantum technologies

    Santagati, R., O'Brien, J., Thompson, M., Bonneau, D., Silverstone, J. & Wang, J., Aug 2015, Proceedings of SPIE.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Contribution (Conference Proceeding)

Cite this