Improving single photon sources via linear optics and photodetection - Dominic Berry

Many quantum information applications rely on the production of a single photon. In practice, single photons are generated with non-unit efficiency; that is, the actual state is a mixture of vacuum with a single photon. In order to obtain a high probability of a single photon, one may attempt to improve the source, or perform post-processing of the source to improve the efficiency. A promising method of performing post-processing is via linear optics and photodetection. I will present results showing that it is possible to improve the probability of a single photon using this method, and examine the limits to this method.