Indistinguishable heralded single photon generation via relative temporal multiplexing of two sources

Abstract

Generating N single photons simultaneously is a formidable challenge due to the lack of deterministic single photon sources. Recent work [New J. Phys. 19, 063013 (2017)] has proposed a relative multiplexing scheme that can enhance the N single photons probability with a minimum of active switching resources. We experimentally demonstrate relative temporal multiplexing on two photon sources with a 90% additional enhancement over the standard temporal multiplexing scheme demonstrated previously. 88 ± 11% visibility of Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference verifies the indistinguishability of the heralded single photons after the synchronization. This proof-of-principle demonstration points out the potential significance of the relative multiplexing scheme for large-scale photonic quantum information processing.