Coherent dynamics of a telecom-wavelength entangled photon source.

Quantum networks can interconnect remote quantum information processors, allowing interaction between different architectures and increasing net computational power. Fibre-optic telecommunications technology offers a practical platform for routing weakly interacting photonic qubits, allowing quantum correlations and entanglement to be established between distant nodes. Although entangled photons have been produced at telecommunications wavelengths using spontaneous parametric downconversion in nonlinear media, as system complexity increases their inherent excess photon generation will become limiting. Here we demonstrate entangled photon pair generation from a semiconductor quantum dot at a telecommunications wavelength. Emitted photons are intrinsically anti-bunched and violate Bell's inequality by 17 standard deviations High-visibility oscillations of the biphoton polarization reveal the time evolution of the emitted state with exceptional clarity, exposing long coherence times. Furthermore, we introduce a method to evaluate the fidelity to a time-evolving Bell state, revealing entanglement between photons emitted up to 5 ns apart, exceeding the exciton lifetime.

An entangled-light-emitting diode.

An optical quantum computer, powerful enough to solve problems so far intractable using conventional digital logic, requires a large number of entangled photons. At present, entangled-light sources are optically driven with lasers, which are impractical for quantum computing owing to the bulk and complexity of the optics required for large-scale applications. Parametric down-conversion is the most widely used source of entangled light, and has been used to implement non-destructive quantum logic gates. However, these sources are Poissonian and probabilistically emit zero or multiple entangled photon pairs in most cycles, fundamentally limiting the success probability of quantum computational operations. These complications can be overcome by using an electrically driven on-demand source of entangled photon pairs, but so far such a source has not been produced. Here we report the realization of an electrically driven source of entangled photon pairs, consisting of a quantum dot embedded in a semiconductor light-emitting diode (LED) structure. We show that the device emits entangled photon pairs under d.c. and a.c. injection, the latter achieving an entanglement fidelity of up to 0.82. Entangled light with such high fidelity is sufficient for application in quantum relays, in core components of quantum computing such as teleportation, and in entanglement swapping. The a.c. operation of the entangled-light-emitting diode (ELED) indicates its potential function as an on-demand source without the need for a complicated laser driving system; consequently, the ELED is at present the best source on which to base future scalable quantum information applications.

Bell-inequality violation with a triggered photon-pair source.

Here we demonstrate, for the first time, violation of Bell's inequality using a triggered quantum dot photon-pair source without post-selection. Furthermore, the fidelity to the expected Bell state is increased above 90% using temporal gating to reject photons emitted at times when collection of uncorrelated light is more probable. A direct measurement of a CHSH Bell inequality is made showing a clear violation, highlighting that a quantum dot entangled photon source is suitable for communication exploiting nonlocal quantum correlations.

Anomalous coulomb drag in electron-hole bilayers.

We report Coulomb drag measurements on GaAs-AlGaAs electron-hole bilayers. The two layers are separated by a 10 or 25 nm barrier. Below T approximately 1 K we find two features that a Fermi-liquid picture cannot explain. First, the drag on the hole layer shows an upturn, which may be followed by a downturn. Second, the effect is either absent or much weaker in the electron layer, even though the measurements are within the linear response regime. Correlated phases have been anticipated in these, but surprisingly, the experimental results appear to contradict Onsager's reciprocity theorem.

Postselective two-photon interference from a continuous nonclassical stream of photons emitted by a quantum dot.

We report an electrically driven semiconductor single-photon source capable of emitting photons with a coherence time of up to 400 ps under fixed bias. It is shown that increasing the injection current causes the coherence time to reduce, and this effect is well explained by the fast modulation of a fluctuating environment. Hong-Ou-Mandel-type two-photon interference using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is demonstrated using this source to test the indistinguishability of individual photons by postselecting events where two photons collide at a beam splitter. Finally, we consider how improvements in our detection system can be used to achieve a higher interference visibility.

Coherence of an entangled exciton-photon state.

We study the effect of the exciton fine-structure splitting on the polarization entanglement of photon pairs produced by the biexciton cascade in a quantum dot. Entanglement persists despite separations between the intermediate energy levels of up to 4 microeV. Measurements show that entanglement of the photon pair is robust to the dephasing of the intermediate exciton state responsible for the first-order coherence time of either single photon. We present a theoretical framework incorporating the effects of spin scattering, background light, and dephasing. We distinguish between the first-order coherence time, and a parameter which we measure for the first time and define as the cross-coherence time.