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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 41: Festkörperlaser IV

Q 41.2: Talk

Friday, March 19, 1999, 14:30–14:45, PH2

Single Photon Turnstile Device — •Oliver Benson — E. L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Manipulation of quantum statistical properties of photons with various non-classical sources is at the heart of quantum optics: Fermionic features such as anti-bunching, sub-Poissonian and squeezing behaviors were demonstrated. In mesoscopic physics it has been demonstrated that an ultra-small tunnel junction regulates the electron transport one by one due to large single charging energy compared to thermal background energy. If such single electron control technique can be extended to control of electron and hole in a p-n junction, a single photon will be regularly emitted one by one and a single photon turnstile device [1] can be realized.

We fabricated a structure, that consists of an intrinsic GaAs central quantum well (QW) in the middle of a p-n junction and additional n-type and p-type side AlGaAs QWs isolated by tunnel barriers from the central QW. The lateral size of the device is reduced to increase the single charging energy.

We discuss the device operation and report experimental evidence for generation of a stream of single photons with well regulated time interval.

[1] A. Imamoglu and Y. Yamamoto, Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 210 (1994)