Photon indistinguishability measurements under pulsed and continuous excitation

The indistinguishability of successively generated photons from a single quantum emitter is most commonly measured using two-photon interference at a beam splitter. Whilst for sources excited in the pulsed regime the measured bunching of photons reflects the full wave-packet indistinguishability of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review research Vol. 4; no. 1; p. 013037
Main Authors Schofield, Ross C., Clear, Chloe, Hoggarth, Rowan A., Major, Kyle D., McCutcheon, Dara P. S., Clark, Alex S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published American Physical Society 01.01.2022
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Summary:The indistinguishability of successively generated photons from a single quantum emitter is most commonly measured using two-photon interference at a beam splitter. Whilst for sources excited in the pulsed regime the measured bunching of photons reflects the full wave-packet indistinguishability of the emitted photons, for continuous wave (cw) excitation, the inevitable dependence on detector timing resolution and driving strength obscures the underlying photon interference process. Here we derive a method to extract full photon wave-packet indistinguishability from cw measurements by considering the relevant correlation functions. The equivalence of both methods is experimentally verified through a comparison of cw and pulsed excitation measurements on an archetypal source of photons, a single molecule.
ISSN:2643-1564
2643-1564
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.013037