Efficient fibre-pigtailed source of indistinguishable single photons
Semiconductor quantum dots in microcavities are an excellent platform for the efficient generation of indistinguishable single photons. However, their use in a wide range of quantum technologies requires their controlled fabrication and integration in compact closed-cycle cryocoolers, with a key challenge being the efficient and stable extraction of the single photons into a single-mode fibre. Here we report on a method for the fibre-pigtailing of deterministically fabricated single-photon sources. Our technique allows for nanometre-scale alignment accuracy between the source and a fibre, alignment that persists all the way from room temperature to 2.4 K. We demonstrate high performance of the device under near-resonant optical excitation with a photon indistinguishability of 97.5 % and a brightness at the output fibre of the system of 20.8 %. We show that the indistinguishability and single-photon rate are stable for over ten hours of continuous operation in a single cooldown. We further confirm that the device performance is not degraded by nine successive cooldown-warmup cycles.
Authors
- William Hease (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9868-2166)
- Thi Huong Au (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1940-9052)
- Alice Bernard
- Albert F. Adiyatullin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3023-4532)
- Florian Pastier
- Nicolas Maring (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7915-9986)
- Valérian Giesz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3061-9731)
- Anton Pishchagin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0965-6394)
- Sébastien Boissier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0467-2093)
- Thomas Volz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9850-4992)
- Petr Stepanov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1121-3146)
- Marie Billard
- Maxime Descampeaux (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5112-4204)
- P. Senellart (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8727-1086)
- Martina Morassi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6472-2916)
- Mathias Pont (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9623-675X)
- A. Lemaı̂tre (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1892-9726)
- Niccolò Somaschi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9448-2200)
- Nico Margaria (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8815-320X)
- Edouard Ivanov
- Thinhinane Bennour
- Raksha Singla
Institutions
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (FR)
- Quandela (France) (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-08-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62712-y
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Photonic and Optical Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.84