Efficient generation of photon pairs from modified carbon nanotubes

Truly secure communications. No eavesdropping. That's the promise of quantum communication. One challenge to making it a reality is light. We need an efficient way to create packets of light, called photons. Now, scientists have identified how modified carbon nanotubes emit photon pairs. The experiments and theory show that the photon pairs are the result of the capture and recombination of two excitons (electron–hole pairs). The evidence suggests that this is an efficient process for generating photon pairs.