Hannover 2003 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 9: Quanteneffekte 1

Q 9.5: Talk

Monday, March 24, 2003, 15:00–15:15, F107

Wave and particle features of single visible photons — •Thomas Aichele, Val Zwiller, and Oliver Benson — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Inst. f. Physik, Hausvogteiplatz 5-7, 10117 Berlin

Sources for the generation of single photon states within a defined time interval and with a high extraction efficiency are important devices for a large range of quantum optics experiments and potential optical quantum technology applications. In our experiment we study the photoluminescence (PL) of both InP and CdSe single quantum dots in a cryogenic micro-PL setup.

We present time correlation measurements in a Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlator under continuous and pulsed excitation, showing a very pronounced photon antibunching. For the pulsed case this demonstrates single photon generation on demand. We have also observed the interference of a single photon with itself in a Michelson interferometer. This gives us information about its linewidth and coherence time, which is an important parameter for the possible application of single photons in quantum information processing. From a more fundamental point of view we observed the complementary particle and wave nature of individual photons in a single experiment.