Bright semiconductor single-photon sources pumped by heterogeneously integrated micropillar lasers with electrical injections

Light Sci Appl. 2023 Mar 6;12(1):65. doi: 10.1038/s41377-023-01110-9.

Abstract

The emerging hybrid integrated quantum photonics combines the advantages of different functional components into a single chip to meet the stringent requirements for quantum information processing. Despite the tremendous progress in hybrid integrations of III-V quantum emitters with silicon-based photonic circuits and superconducting single-photon detectors, on-chip optical excitations of quantum emitters via miniaturized lasers towards single-photon sources (SPSs) with low power consumptions, small device footprints, and excellent coherence properties is highly desirable yet illusive. In this work, we present realizations of bright semiconductor SPSs heterogeneously integrated with on-chip electrically-injected microlasers. Different from previous one-by-one transfer printing technique implemented in hybrid quantum dot (QD) photonic devices, multiple deterministically coupled QD-circular Bragg Grating (CBG) SPSs were integrated with electrically-injected micropillar lasers at one time via a potentially scalable transfer printing process assisted by the wide-field photoluminescence (PL) imaging technique. Optically pumped by electrically-injected microlasers, pure single photons are generated with a high-brightness of a count rate of 3.8 M/s and an extraction efficiency of 25.44%. Such a high-brightness is due to the enhancement by the cavity mode of the CBG, which is confirmed by a Purcell factor of 2.5. Our work provides a powerful tool for advancing hybrid integrated quantum photonics in general and boosts the developments for realizing highly-compact, energy-efficient and coherent SPSs in particular.