Hue- Manatee: temporal and spectral multiplexing for super high-efficiency photon sources

Single photons are the workhorse of the future quantum technology industry, being a fundamental component to high fidelity quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum imaging and some types of quantum sensing. However, to date, no truly single photon sources of high quality, high efficiency, indistinguishable exists on the market. Current single photon sources on the market are not ideal for many reasons. All, including ORCA's current source, are very far from being 'on demand' with efficiencies between 1-15% (firing 'blanks' for most of the time, with spaces where the single photons should be). The most efficient sources that have been demonstrated are complex free space experiments, which achieve efficiencies of 30%+, however, these are far from being suitable for a reliable product. Quantum dot sources can achieve efficiencies of 15%, but are unstable, due to the properties of the photons drifting from one photon to another, or from one source to another.

All of these properties diminish the quality, also known as the fidelity of interactions between photons, and make them fundamentally poorer in performance when used for quantum computing and communications (for example, limiting how far photonic quantum computers can be scaled up).

In this project, temporal multiplexing techniques from ORCA's previous Innovate UK project 'Manatee' will be implemented alongside a completely new spectrally multiplexing technique. Together, the two techniques will be combined in a prototype product with unparalleled performance and efficiency.