Quantum light generation with artificial atoms

Quantum light is a key ingredient of the emerging second quantum revolution. It is the cornerstone of many applications ranging from quantum computing to quantum networks, offering many degrees of freedom to encode the information. 

Semiconductor quantum dots are artificial atoms that, over the years, have been shown to be excellent sources of quantum light.
In this talk, I will present the key ingredients of the quantum dot system and explain how, using the tools of cavity quantum electrodynamics and all the possibilities offered by semiconductor nano-processing, they have become close to text-book quantum emitters. They can generate single photons at unparalleled efficiency and near perfect quantum purity opening the path toward the development of intermediate scale quantum computing. 

Playing with the spin degree of freedom of a carrier trapped in the quantum dot, we recently unlocked a critical knob for scaling up : the efficient generation of photonic cluster state – chains of entangled photons. Finally, this system also allows us to revisit the fundamentals of light-matter interaction and exploit them to generate entanglement in the photon number basis.