A single molecule as a high-fidelity photon gun for producing intensity-squeezed light

A two-level atom cannot emit more than one photon at a time. As early as the 1980s, this quantum feature was identified as a gateway to 'single-photon sources', where a regular excitation sequence would create a stream of light particles with photon number fluctuations below the shot noise(1). Such an intensity-squeezed beam of light would be desirable for a range of applications, such as quantum imaging, sensing, enhanced precision measurements and information processing(2,3). However, experimental realizations of these sources have been hindered by large losses caused by low photon-collection efficiencies and photophysical shortcomings. By using a planar metallodielectric antenna applied to an organic molecule, we demonstrate the most regular stream of single photons reported to date. The measured intensity fluctuations were limited by our detection efficiency and amounted to 2.2 dB squeezing