Temporal shaping of single photon pulses

The ability to control the temporal shape of single photon pulses is highly desirable in quantum information processing. For instance, it has been shown that Gaussian pulses are best suited for linear optics quantum computingl. By mimicking the time reversal of a spontaneous emission event, it also allows to optimize the absorption of the prepared photons by a quantum emitter. In this work we investigate the potential of using fast modifications of the detuning between an atomic system and a cavity mode during photon emission to reach this goal. We compare two approaches consisting of varying the emitter or cavity frequency. The latter, achievable by a fast modification of the refractive index of a solid state cavity, will be shown to have negligible influence on the photon spectrum. It allows to create Gaussian pulses interacting with a fidelity to the target photons of 99%, as well as time reversed photons absorbed by an atom in a cavity with a probability of 93%.