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Silicon microring resonators are being recently used for high-brightness and efficient photon-pair generation at telecommunication wavelengths. Here, based on detailed theoretical and numerical modeling, we study the impact on pair generation of increasing the optical pump power, which generally causes nonlinear impairments such as free-carrier and two-photon absorption in silicon micro-resonators. Contrary to expectation, the pair generation properties of such devices may seem to be preserved at increasing pump powers, although not better than at a moderate pump power. These results suggest that silicon microrings can be used for pair generation over a wide range of pump powers, which may benefit applications in remotely pumped architectures, where the pump level might not be known a priori.
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Photon pair generation using a silicon photonic hybrid laser
We report photon pairs and heralded single photons generated at 1310 nm wavelengths using silicon photonics technology, demonstrating that comparable performance could be achieved when a silicon microring resonator was pumped either by a desktop laser instrument or by an electrically injected, room-temperature hybrid silicon laser. Measurements showed that 130 kilo-coincidence-counts per second pair rates could be generated, with coincidences-to-accidentals ratio approximately 100 at about 0.34 mW optical pump power and anti-bunching upon heralding with second-order intensity correlation g(2)(0) = 0.06 at about 0.9 mW optical pump power. These results suggest that hybrid silicon lasers, which are ultra-compact and wafer-scale manufacturable, could be used in place of packaged, stand-alone lasers for generating photon pairs at data communication wavelengths and enable large-scale, cost-effective manufacturing of integrated sources for quantum communications and computing.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1640968
- PAR ID:
- 10594216
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Institute of Physics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- APL Photonics
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2378-0967
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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