Two-photon interference from two blinking quantum emitters
Klaus D. Jöns, Katarina Stensson, Marcus Reindl, Marcin Świłło, Yong-Heng Huo, Val Zwiller, Armando Rastelli, Rinaldo Trotta, Gunnar G. Bjork · Physical review. B./Physical review. B · 2017
We investigate the effect of blinking on the two-photon interference measurement from two independent quantum emitters. We find that blinking significantly alters the statistics in the Hong-Ou-Mandel second-order intensity correlation function ${\mathrm{g}}^{(2)}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ and the outcome of two-photon interference measurements performed with independent quantum emitters. We theoretically demonstrate that the presence of blinking can be experimentally recognized by a deviation from the ${\mathrm{g}}_{D}^{(2)}(0)=0.5$ value when distinguishable photons from two emitters impinge on a beam splitter. Our findings explain the significant differences between linear losses and blinking for correlation measurements between independent sources and are experimentally verified using a parametric down-conversion photon-pair source. We show that blinking imposes a mandatory cross-check measurement to correctly estimate the degree of indistinguishability of photons emitted by independent quantum emitters.