Narrowband high-fidelity all-fibre source of heralded single photons at 1570 nm

An all-fibre heralded single photon source operating at 1570 nm has been demonstrated. The device generates correlated photon pairs, widely spaced in frequency, through four-wave mixing in a photonic crystal fibre. Separation of the pair photons and narrowband filtering is all achieved in fibre. The output heralded single photon rate was 9.2 x 10(4) per second, with a counts-to-accidentals ratio of 10.4 and a heralding fidelity of 52%. Furthermore, narrowband filtering ensured that the output single photon state was near time-bandwidth limited with a coherence length of 4 ps. Such a source is well suited to quantum information processing applications.