Re:Quantum researchers able to split one photon into three
by anfractuosity on Sunday March 01, 2020 @04:33PM
(#22459523)
Ah Gotcha, I'm intrigued wiki says "SPDC allows for the creation of optical fields containing (to a good approximation) a single photon. As of 2005, this is the predominant mechanism for an experimenter to create single photons", do you know of a simple explanation on how single photons are generated using the crystal + laser?
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Re:Quantum researchers able to split one photon into three
by fsh on Sunday March 01, 2020 @04:47PM
(#22459611)
Most quantum optics experiments are done by simply attenuating laser pulses until they have on average much less than one photon per pulse. This way the probability of having more than one photon is very low (at the cost of reduced count rates since most pulses don't contain any photons). These pulses can then be used to create entangled photon pairs using SPDC.
There are also several ways of creating pulses that contain exactly one photon, but this is way more complicated.