Bandwidth-tunable single-photon source in an ion-trap quantum network

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Nov 20;103(21):213601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.213601. Epub 2009 Nov 16.

Abstract

We report a tunable single-photon source based on a single trapped ion. Employing spontaneous Raman scattering and in-vacuum optics with large numerical aperture, single photons are efficiently created with controlled temporal shape and coherence time. These can be varied between 70 ns and 1.6 micros, as characterized by operating two sources simultaneously in two remote ion traps which reveals mutual and individual coherence through two-photon interference.