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Main Authors: Gulla, Jan, Ryen, Kai, Skaar, Johannes
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.06472
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author Gulla, Jan
Ryen, Kai
Skaar, Johannes
author_facet Gulla, Jan
Ryen, Kai
Skaar, Johannes
contents Exact single photons cannot be generated on demand due to their infinite tails. To quantify how close realizable optical states can be to some target single photon in one dimension, we argue that there are two natural but incompatible ways to specify the target state. Either it can be expressed as a photon with a chosen positive-frequency spectrum, or it can be described as an (unphysical) photon in a chosen positive-time pulse. The results show that for sufficiently short target pulses, the closest realizable states contain substantial multiphoton components. Upper and lower bounds for the maximum fidelity are derived and are expressed as functions of the size of the target state's tail, for negative time or negative frequency, respectively. We also generalize the bounds to arbitrary photon-number states.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2109_06472
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Limits for realizing single photons
Gulla, Jan
Ryen, Kai
Skaar, Johannes
Quantum Physics
Exact single photons cannot be generated on demand due to their infinite tails. To quantify how close realizable optical states can be to some target single photon in one dimension, we argue that there are two natural but incompatible ways to specify the target state. Either it can be expressed as a photon with a chosen positive-frequency spectrum, or it can be described as an (unphysical) photon in a chosen positive-time pulse. The results show that for sufficiently short target pulses, the closest realizable states contain substantial multiphoton components. Upper and lower bounds for the maximum fidelity are derived and are expressed as functions of the size of the target state's tail, for negative time or negative frequency, respectively. We also generalize the bounds to arbitrary photon-number states.
title Limits for realizing single photons
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.06472