Picosecond laser pulses for quantum dot-microcavity based single photon generation by cascaded electro-optic modulation of a narrow-linewidth laser

Recent developments in integrated optics have made it possible to fabricate high-bandwidth electro-optic modulators (EOMs). Here we show cascaded operation of two of such modulators driven by custom-built electronics delivering on-demand picosecond pulses and application to a quantum dot cavity-QED single photon source. We implement an EOM-based correlation technique and demonstrate light pulses as short as 24$\pm$2 ps with a single EOM. The EOMs can be synchronized and operated in series, we then produce optical pulses down to 17 ps. To optimize the pulse contrast, we analyze for two different EOM devices the transmission as a function of EOM bias, wavelength and temperature, and we show that by temperature tuning and stabilization, a pulse contrast above 25 dB can be obtained at the targeted wavelength. With this high contrast we demonstrate resonant excitation of an InGaAs quantum dot - microcavity based single photon source, demonstrating a crucial technology for scalability and synchronization of large scale photonic quantum applications.