2011/11/30 by Andreas Christ, Christine Silberhorn · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.85.023829
published as Phys. Rev. A 85, 023829 (2012) · 7 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2012/02/22 · arxiv updated 2012/02/23
Parametric down-conversion (PDC) is one of the most widely used methods to create pure single-photon states for quantum information applications. However little attention has been paid to higher-order photon components in the PDC process, yet these ultimately limit the prospects of generating single-photons of high quality. In this paper we investigate the impacts of higher-order photon components and multiple frequency modes on the heralding rates and single-photon fidelities. This enables us to determine the limits of PDC sources for single-photon generation. Our results show that a perfectly single-mode PDC source in conjunction with a photon-number resolving detector is ultimately capable of creating single-photon Fock states with unit fidelity and a maximal state creation probability of 25%. Hence an array of 17 switched sources is required to build a deterministic (>99% emission probability) pure single-photon source.