Single photon light sources

In the past, generation of single photons for subsequent use in physical or physicochemical experiments was difficult. In the last few years the situation has changed dramatically. Now, such sources based on a number of different techniques are available. Two of them produce antibunching photons by controlled recombination of electrons and holes in semiconductor heterojunctions. A second type of source is based on indium-arsenide quantum dots in high Q factor microcavities. Two further sources use single dibenz-anthanthrene or single terrylene molecules. While all but one sources have to be operated at temperatures close to zero Kelvin, the terrylene source works at room temperature and provides up to 10 billion photons before photodecay, i.e. it can be operated for hours When the latter is operated at zero Kelvin, it is even more stable and can be used in a microscope to generate complete images. The present review compares and summarizes properties of these single optical photon sources and, in addition, tries to present an argument, why single photons cannot be particle like objects but must have a spatial extension of at least several tens of nanometers.