Single-photon routing by time-division phase modulation in a Sagnac interferometer

Abstract

In this letter, we report the experimental demonstration of a single-photon router based on a time-division Sagnac interferometer, wherein differential phase shifts are applied on either the clockwise or counterclockwise quasi-single-photon pulses to determine the single photon interference and consequently output photon routing. High fidelity (>85%) of single-photon routing was demonstrated over a long-distance Sagnac loop. Stable performance was guaranteed by passive compensation of stress and temperature dependent drifts of the fiber-optic path. Experimental data show that time-division single-photon routing can be realized by controlling the applied electric pulses on the integrated phase modulators in the Sagnac loop, which makes this setup suitable for a practical quantum cryptography system.