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Abstract

We study the generation of single-photon pulses with the tailored temporal shape via nonlocal spectral filtering. A shaped photon is heralded from a time-energy entangled photon pair upon spectral filtering and time-resolved detection of its entangled counterpart. We show that the temporal shape of the heralded photon is defined by the time-inverted impulse response of the spectral filter and does not depend on the heralding instant. Thus one can avoid postselection of particular heralding instants and achieve a substantially higher heralding rate of shaped photons as compared to the generation of photons via nonlocal temporal modulation. Furthermore, the method can be used to generate shaped photons with a coherence time in the ns-μs range and is particularly suitable to produce photons with the exponentially rising temporal shape required for efficient interfacing to a single quantum emitter in free space.