Australian team generates single photons ‘on demand’
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A team from the University of Sydney has made a breakthrough that may enable the production of extremely compact optical chips that can deliver a photon at a time.
"It is easy to generate photons at high rates, but it's much harder to ensure they come out one by one," said Matthew Collins, a PhD student from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) at the University of Sydney. "For that reason, the quantum science community has been waiting for more than a decade for a compact optical chip that delivers exactly one photon at a time at very high rates."
While it has been possible for some years to generate a single photon in an optical circuit, previous demonstrations have been difficult to implement, to scale or been noisy.
"This result has applications in the development of complex quantum technologies, including completely secure communications, quantum measurement, the simulation of biological and chemical systems and of course quantum computing," said Dr Alex Clark, leader of the CUDOS research team.
The work at the University of Sydney is part of a wider collaboration, which also involves the University of St Andrews and the University of York.
"A key breakthrough was the development by CUDOS of photonic chips that slow light," said CUDOS director Professor Ben Eggleton. "This makes single photon generation more likely, reducing energy demands and allowing devices with lengths no longer than 200µm."
The next step is to integrate the components onto a single chip so an on demand 'push button' single photon source can be deployed in future photonic quantum technologies.
