The work carried out during the project can be summarised in the following.
First, I developed and optimised techniques involving resonance fluorescence spectroscopy for single-photon generation and characterisation. From here, the user (final) efficiency of high-quality single-photon sources was increased to about 10%, denoting the direct detection of around 8 MHz of single-photon countrates from standard 80 MHz pump driving. This countrate number is among the highest recorded in the literature.
Subsequently, I designed and co-develop a system for active and efficient time-to-space mapping of the single-photon signal. This apparatus takes a stream of temporally-separated single-photons, all within the same spatial mode, and transforms it into various spatially-separated single-photons that propagate simultaneously. This constitutes the basis of a scalable multi-photon source.
The multi-photon source previously described has been used in a few different experiments. First, within the framework of a collaboration between France and Italy based groups, it served in the first demonstration of joint scalable photonic platforms: solid-state based multi-photon interference in reconfigurable and integrated photonic circuits. Secondly, in collaboration with an Australian research group, the source was also used for demonstrating the heralded generation of quantum entanglement, a version for creating entanglement that is required in scalable applications.
Later on, in collaboration with an Israel-based group, the high-rate single-photon source developed within this project was also utilised for demonstrating multi-partite entangled states known as cluster states, a resource highly sought-after in quantum computing applications.
Several of the results obtained during this project have been reported in written form, either submitted or already published in prestigious scientific journals.
