On-Demand Single-Photon Sources for Correlated Calibration of Single Photon Detectors

To support ultrasensitive detection and measurement in NASA aerospace applications, the development of quantum sensing and measurement (QSM) plays the key role, which involves a wide range of technologies and instruments whose performance is not constrained by the boundaries of classical physics. Single-photon counting has become one of the core techniques in remote sensing, measurement, and optical communications. Thorough characterization of the detection capability of a single-photon detector is required for accurate QSM applications. Compared to the conventional radiant-power-measurement-based method, the photon-pair-based correlated approach, in which the detection of one photon heralds the other photon of the pair with certainty, is well suited for straightforward photon counting calibration. So far, the most widely used lsquo;workhorsersquo; for generating photon pairs have been dominated by parametric down-conversion, which, however is intrinsically probabilistic. Aiming at on-demand generation of photon pairs for correlated calibration of SPDs, Nanohmics, Inc. and Prof. Anton Malkorsquo;s research group at the University of Texas at Dallas, in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer A. Hollingsworth at Los Alamos National Laboratory, propose to develop high-brightness single-photon pair sources based on biexciton cascade of single colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals.