Seminar: Alisa Javadi

Photonic quantum technologies have a unique potential for applications such as large-scale quantum networks and quantum-enhanced sensing. Furthermore, photons provide new paradigms for quantum simulations and a testbed for benchmarking the advantage of quantum simulators over classical ones. These applications demand novel resources such as efficient single-photon sources, large clusters of entangled photons, and nonlinear optical gates. At the current stage, solid-state quantum optics can strongly impact photonic quantum information processing. Solid-state quantum emitters can generate the necessary single photons and more sophisticated cluster states deterministically, currently posing a significant bottleneck for photonic quantum information processing. In this talk, I will present our work on realizing some of these elements using quantum dots in optical microcavities. In the first part, I will present an efficient source of indistinguishable single photons [1]. I will show that we achieve an end-to-end efficiency of 57 %, 2.3 times higher than the state-of-the-art, and discuss the significance of this improvement for photonic quantum technologies. In the second part, I will present an optical equivalent of a diode [2]. I will show that a single quantum dot can block the transmission of the photons in one direction while allowing the transport in the opposite direction. I will also show that the transmission of photons in our diode is nonlinear and that the onset of the nonlinearity is at the single-photon limit. At the end of my talk, I will discuss the potential of this platform for generating more sophisticated graph states and cluster states.