Electric-Field Control of Photon Indistinguishability in Cascaded Decays in Quantum Dots.

Abstract

Photon indistinguishability, entanglement, and antibunching are key ingredients in quantum optics and photonics. Decay cascades in quantum emitters offer a simple method to create entangled-photon-pairs with negligible multipair generation probability. However, the degree of indistinguishability of the photons emitted in a cascade is intrinsically limited by the lifetime ratio of the involved transitions. Here we show that, for the biexciton-exciton cascade in a quantum dot, this ratio can be widely tuned by an applied electric field. Hong-Ou-Mandel interference measurements of two subsequently emitted biexciton photons show that their indistinguishability increases with increasing field, following the theoretically predicted behavior. At the same time, the emission line width stays close to the transform-limit, favoring applications relying on the interference among photons emitted by different sources.