We analyze how imperfections in single-photon detectors impact the characterization of photon-pair sources. We perform exact calculations to reveal the effects of multi-pair emissions and of noisy, non-unit efficiency, non photon-number resolving detections on the Cauchy-Schwarz parameter, on the second order auto-correlation and cross-correlation functions, and on the visibilities of both Hong-Ou-Mandel and Bell-like interferences. We consider sources producing either two-mode squeezed states or states with a Poissonian photon distribution. The proposed formulas are useful in practice to determine the impacts of multi-pair emissions and dark counts in standard tests used in quantum optics.
@article{arxiv.1109.0194,
title = {Detector imperfections in photon-pair source characterization},
author = {P. Sekatski and N. Sangouard and F. Bussieres and C. Clausen and N. Gisin and H. Zbinden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.0194},
year = {2015}
}