Aspheric lens design proposal for near-perfect mode-matching of a broadband quantum dot micropillar to a single-mode fiber
Quantum dots in micropillars are one of the most promising options for a bright, deterministic single photon source. While highly efficient devices (>95%) have been designed, there remains a significant bottleneck that impacts the overall system efficiency: the large numerical aperture of the output mode. This leads to inefficient coupling of emitted photons into single-mode fiber (SMF), thus limiting practical integration into quantum computing and communication architectures. We show that with the addition of a well designed aspheric SiO<sub>2</sub> microlens we can decrease the mode-matching losses to a SMF from 83.1% to <0.1(0.1)%. This can result in a single photon source design with 96.4(0.1)% end-to-end efficiency, paving the way for scalable photonic quantum technologies.
Authors
- Jun Tai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3672-0125)
- David Dlaka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7579-7646)
- Jean A. McDougall (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3144-4387)
- A. B. Young (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8559-5442)
- Ruth Oulton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1206-5357)
- Edmund Harbord (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2835-943X)
- Petros Androvitsaneas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5013-0282)
- Yichen Zhang
Institutions
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- University of Bristol (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Optics Express
- Published
- 2025-10-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1364/oe.574455
- Primary Topic
- Semiconductor Lasers and Optical Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00