A multipair-free source of entangled photons in the solid state

Abstract

Unwanted multiphoton emission commonly reduces the degree of entanglement of photons generated by non-classical light sources and, in turn, hampers their exploitation in quantum information science and technology. Quantum emitters have the potential to overcome this hurdle but, so far, the effect of multiphoton emission on the quality of entanglement has never been addressed in detail. Here, we tackle this challenge using photon pairs from a resonantly-driven quantum dot and comparing quantum state tomography and second-order coherence measurements as a function of the excitation power. We observe that the relative (absolute) multiphoton emission probability is as low as $p_m= (5.6 \pm 0.6)10^{-4}$ ($p_2= (1.5 \pm 0.3)10^{-6}$) at the maximum source brightness, values that lead to a negligible effect on the degree of entanglement. In stark contrast with probabilistic sources of entangled photons, we also demonstrate that the multiphoton emission probability and the degree of entanglement remain practically unchanged against the excitation power for multiple Rabi cycles, despite we clearly observe oscillations in the second-order coherence measurements. Our results, explained by a theoretical model that we develop to estimate the actual multiphoton contribution in the two-photon density matrix, highlight that quantum dots can be regarded as a multipair-free source of entangled photons in the solid state.