Heralded generation of high-purity ultrashort single photons in programmable temporal shapes

Opt Express. 2018 Feb 5;26(3):2764-2774. doi: 10.1364/OE.26.002764.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a source of nearly pure single photons in arbitrary temporal shapes heralded from a parametric down-conversion (PDC) source at telecom wavelengths. The technology is enabled by the tailored dispersion of in-house fabricated waveguides with shaped pump pulses to directly generate the PDC photons in on-demand temporal shapes. We generate PDC photons in Hermite-Gauss and frequency-binned modes and confirm a minimum purity of 0.81, even for complex temporal shapes.