Controlling the ouput of a light emitter is one of the basic tasks of photonics, with landmarks such as the laser and single-photon sources. The development of quantum applications makes it increasingly important to diversify the available quantum sources. Here, we propose a cavity QED scheme to realize emitters that release their energy in groups, or “bundles” of N photons, for integer N. Close to 100% of two-photon emission and 90% of three-photon emission is shown to be within reach of state of the art samples. The emission can be tuned with system parameters so that the device behaves as a laser or as a N-photon gun. The theoretical formalism to characterize such emitters is developed, with the bundle statistics arising as an extension of the fundamental correlation functions of quantum optics. These emitters will be useful for quantum information processing and for medical applications.

Reliable technologies for the monolithic integration of lasers onto silicon represent the holy grail for chip-level optical interconnects. In this context, nanowires (NWs) fabricated using III-V semiconductors are of strong interest since they can be grown site-selectively on silicon using conventional epitaxial approaches. Their unique one-dimensional structure and high refractive index naturally facilitate low loss optical waveguiding and optical recirculation in the active NW-core region. However, lasing from NWs on silicon has not been achieved to date, due to the poor modal reflectivity at the NW-silicon interface. We demonstrate how, by inserting a tailored dielectric interlayer at the NW-Si interface, low-threshold single mode lasing can be achieved in vertical-cavity GaAs-AlGaAs core-shell NW lasers on silicon as measured at low temperature. By exploring the output characteristics along a detection direction parallel to the NW-axis, we measure very high spontaneous emission factors comparable to nanocavity lasers (β = 0.2) and achieve ultralow threshold pump energies ≤11 pJ/pulse. Analysis of the input-output characteristics of the NW lasers and the power dependence of the lasing emission line width demonstrate the potential for high pulsation rates ≥250 GHz. Such highly efficient nanolasers grown monolithically on silicon are highly promising for the realization of chip-level optical interconnects.

We report the routing of quantum light emitted by self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots (QDs) into the optical modes of a GaAs ridge waveguide and its efficient detection on-chip via evanescent coupling to NbN superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SSPDs). The waveguide coupled SSPDs primarily detect QD luminescence, with scattered photons from the excitation laser onto the proximal detector being negligible by comparison. The SSPD detection efficiency from the evanescently coupled waveguide modes is shown to be two orders of magnitude larger when compared with operation under normal incidence illumination, due to the much longer optical interaction length. Furthermore, in-situ time resolved measurements performed using the integrated detector show an average QD spontaneous emission lifetime of 0.95 ns, measured with a timing jitter of only 72 ps. The performance metrics of the SSPD integrated directly onto GaAs nano-photonic hardware confirms the strong potential for on-chip few-photon quantum optics using such semiconductor-superconductor hybrid systems.