2007/03/26 by Peter P Rohde, Rohde, Peter P
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0703238
2 pages
arxiv created 2007/03/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We discuss the conditional preparation of single photons via parametric down-conversion. This technique is commonly used as a single photon source in modern quantum optics experiments. A significant problem facing this technique is the inability of present day photo-detectors to resolve photon number. This results in mixing with higher photon number terms. To overcome this several techniques have been proposed, including multi-port detection and time-division multiplexing. These techniques help approximate number resolving detection even when using non-number resolving detectors. In this paper we focus on 2-port detection, the simplest such scheme. We show that by making the 2-port device asymmetric the fidelity of prepared photons can be improved.