Superior properties in room-temperature colloidal-dot quantum emitters revealed by ultralow-dark-count detections of temporally-purified single photons

Abstract

The realization of high-quality quantum emitters that can operate at room temperature is important for accelerating the application of quantum technologies, such as quantum communication, quantum information processing, and quantum metrology. In this work, we study the photon-antibunching properties on room-temperature emission from individual colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) using superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors and temporal filtering of the photoluminescence decay curve. We find that high single-photon purities and high photon-generation rates can be simultaneously achieved by removing the signals originating from the sequential two-photon emission of biexcitons created by multiple excitation pulses. We successfully demonstrate that the ultrahigh performance of the room-temperature single-photon sources showing g(2)(0) ≪ 10−2 can be confirmed by the ultralow-dark-count detection of the temporally purified single photons. These findings provide strong evidence for the attractiveness of CQDs as candidates for high-quality room-temperature quantum light sources.