skip to main content


Title: Progress Toward Generation of Spatially-Entangled Photon Pairs in a Few-Mode Fiber
Aiming at producing spatial-mode-entangled photon pairs in a few-mode fiber, we experimentally demonstrate generation of idler beam from a seed signal in a superposition of two fiber modes. For every signal mode superposition, we observe the indication of idler mode orthogonality to the signal mode.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1842680 1937860
NSF-PAR ID:
10299861
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE Photonics Conference 2020
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. We describe a novel scheme for spatial-mode-entangled photon-pair generation in a few-mode fiber. We experimentally verify the underlying inter-modal parametric processes with two-mode classical signal input and demonstrate high mode purity of the generated idler. 
    more » « less
  2. null (Ed.)
    We describe a novel scheme for generation of orbital-angular-momentum-entangled photons in a few-mode fiber. We experimentally verify the underlying inter-modal parametric processes with two-mode classical signal input, observing high mode purity of the generated idler. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    Qudit entanglement is an indispensable resource for quantum information processing since increasing dimensionality provides a pathway to higher capacity and increased noise resilience in quantum communications, and cluster-state quantum computations. In continuous-variable time–frequency entanglement, encoding multiple qubits per photon is only limited by the frequency correlation bandwidth and detection timing jitter. Here, we focus on the discrete-variable time–frequency entanglement in a biphoton frequency comb (BFC), generating by filtering the signal and idler outputs with a fiber Fabry–Pérot cavity with 45.32 GHz free-spectral range (FSR) and 1.56 GHz full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) from a continuous-wave (cw)-pumped type-II spontaneous parametric downconverter (SPDC). We generate a BFC whose time-binned/frequency-binned Hilbert space dimensionality is at least 324, based on the assumption of a pure state. Such BFC’s dimensionality doubles up to 648, after combining with its post-selected polarization entanglement, indicating a potential 6.28 bits/photon classical-information capacity. The BFC exhibits recurring Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) dips over 61 time bins with a maximum visibility of 98.4% without correction for accidental coincidences. In a post-selected measurement, it violates the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt (CHSH) inequality for polarization entanglement by up to 18.5 standard deviations with anS-parameter of up to 2.771. It has Franson interference recurrences in 16 time bins with a maximum visibility of 96.1% without correction for accidental coincidences. From the zeroth- to the third-order Franson interference, we infer an entanglement of formation (Eof) up to 1.89 ± 0.03 ebits—where 2 ebits is the maximal entanglement for a 4 × 4 dimensional biphoton—as a lower bound on the 61 time-bin BFC’s high-dimensional entanglement. To further characterize time-binned/frequency-binned BFCs we obtain Schmidt mode decompositions of BFCs generated using cavities with 45.32, 15.15, and 5.03 GHz FSRs. These decompositions confirm the time–frequency scaling from Fourier-transform duality. Moreover, we present the theory of conjugate Franson interferometry—because it is characterized by the state’s joint-temporal intensity (JTI)—which can further help to distinguish between pure-state BFC and mixed state entangled frequency pairs, although the experimental implementation is challenging and not yet available. In summary, our BFC serves as a platform for high-dimensional quantum information processing and high-dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD).

     
    more » « less
  4. Hemmer, Philip R. ; Migdall, Alan L. (Ed.)
    Recent proposals suggest that distributed single photons serving as a ‘non-local oscillator’ can outperform coherent states as a phase reference for long-baseline interferometric imaging of weak sources [1,2]. Such nonlocal quantum states distributed between telescopes can, in-principle, surpass the limitations of conventional interferometric-based astronomical imaging approaches for very-long baselines such as: signal-to-noise, shot noise, signal loss, and faintness of the imaged objects. Here we demonstrate in a table-top experiment, interference between a nonlocal oscillator generated by equal-path splitting of an idler photon from a pulsed, separable, parametric down conversion process and a spectrally single-mode, quasi-thermal source. We compare the single-photon nonlocal oscillator to a more conventional local oscillator with uncertain photon number. Both methods enabled reconstruction of the source’s Gaussian spatial distribution by measurement of the interference visibility as a function of baseline separation and then applying the van Cittert-Zernike theorem [3,4]. In both cases, good qualitative agreement was found with the reconstructed source width and the known source width as measured using a camera. We also report an increase of signal-to-noise per ‘faux’ stellar photon detected when heralding the idler photon. 1593 heralded (non-local oscillator) detection events led to a maximum visibility of ~17% compared to the 10412 unheralded (classical local oscillator) detection events, which gave rise to a maximum visibility of ~10% – the first instance of quantum-enhanced sensing in this context. 
    more » « less
  5. Recently, our groups have introduced the notion of optical parametric amplification based on non-Hermitian phase matching wherein the incorporation of loss can lead to gain in this nonlinear optical process. Previous simulation results using second-order nonlinear optical coupled-mode theory have demonstrated the potential of this technique as an alternative to the stringent phase-matching condition, which is often difficult to achieve in semiconductor platforms. Here we fortify this notion for the case of third-order nonlinearity by considering parametric amplification in silicon nanowires and illustrate the feasibility of these devices by employing rigorous finite-difference time-domain analysis using realistic materials and geometric parameters. Particularly, we demonstrate that by systematic control of the optical loss of the idler in a four-wave mixing process, we can achieve efficient unidirectional energy conversion from the pump to the signal component even when the typical phase-matching condition is violated. Importantly, our simulations show that a signal gain of∼<#comment/>9dBfor a waveguide length of a few millimeters is possible over a large bandwidth of several hundreds of nanometers (∼<#comment/>600nm). This bandwidth is nearly 2 orders of magnitude larger than what can be achieved in the conventional silicon-photonics-based four-wave mixing process.

     
    more » « less