Novel heralded sources for photons

Supervisor: Dr Austin Lund

Having good photon sources is essential to building optical quantum

technologies such as optical quantum computers. The most established source of

photons for quantum optical experiments is via parametric down conversion,

which generates pairs of photons and one photon in the pair is used as a

trigger. The parametric down-conversion process produces a specific kind of

quantum state of light called a Gaussian state. More general states than the

parametric down-conversion state are possible. With general unconditional

Gaussian sources it is possible to produce states that mimic single photons for

a wide array of quantum optics experiments, but fails in others. This project

will explore the most general case of Gaussian states with heralding and find

applications under which the general case is better than down-conversion.