Anti-bunched photons from a lateral light-emitting diode

We demonstrate anti-bunched emission from a lateral-light emitting diode. Sub-Poissonian emission statistic, with a g((2))(0) = 0.7, is achieved at cryogenic temperature in the pulsed low-current regime, by exploiting electron injection through shallow impurities located in the diode depletion region. Thanks to its simple fabrication scheme and to its modulation bandwidth in the gigahertz range, we believe our devices are an appealing substitute for highly attenuated lasers in existing quantum-key-distribution systems. Our devices outperform strongly attenuated lasers in terms of multi-photon emission events and can therefore lead to a significant security improvement in existing quantum key distribution systems. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3643056]