The spatial modes of light have grasped great research interests because of its great potentials in optical communications, optical manipulation and trapping, optical metrology and quantum information processing. Here we report on generating of photon pairs in Hermite-Gaussian (HG) mode in a type-I optical parametric oscillator operated far below threshold. The bandwidths of the photon pairs are 11.4 MHz and 20.8MHz for two different HG modes respectively, therefore the photons can be stored in cold Rubidium atomic ensembles. The non-classical properties of HG modes are clearly verified by the violation of Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Our study provides an effective way to generate photon pairs with narrow bandwidth in high order spatial modes for high dimensional quantum communication.
The spatial modes of light have grasped great research interests because of its great potentials in optical communications, optical manipulation and trapping, optical metrology and quantum information processing. Here we report on generating of photon pairs in Hermite-Gaussian (HG) mode in a type-I optical parametric oscillator operated far below threshold. The bandwidths of the photon pairs are 11.4 MHz and 20.8MHz for two different HG modes respectively, therefore the photons can be stored in cold Rubidium atomic ensembles. The non-classical properties of HG modes are clearly verified by the violation of Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Our study provides an effective way to generate photon pairs with narrow bandwidth in high order spatial modes for high dimensional quantum communication.
Squeezed light is a fundamental nonclassical resource in quantum optics, and considerable progress has been made in its generation and manipulation. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a compact higher-order spatial modes squeezed light source, achieved by integrating second-harmonic generation and optical parametric oscillation within a single doubly resonant cavity. The HG 2 m ,2 n pump field, which is essential for the generation of HG m , n mode squeezed states, is produced via internal second-harmonic generation, substantially enhancing both the conversion efficiency and mode purity. With this configuration, we successfully generated squeezed vacuum states in the HG 0,0 , HG 1,0 , and HG 2,0 modes, achieving squeezing levels of −4.53 ± 0.26 dB, −3.68 ± 0.19 dB, and −2.58 ± 0.08 dB, respectively. This platform provides a viable pathway for scalable, multimode quantum state generation, with broad potential in quantum metrology and quantum communication.
In this paper, we present a narrow bandwidth source at the telecom wavelength based on type II PPKTP crystal inside an optical cavity. Simultaneous resonances of the pump and the two down-converted fields are achieved by special design of the cavity. This is a triple resonances optical parametric oscillator (OPO) far below threshold, which generates photon pairs at around 1560 nm with a bandwidth of 8 MHz. A coherence time of 27.7 ns is estimate by a time correlation measurement, and the estimated photon pairs generating rate is 134 s-1MHz-1mW-1. As entangled photon pairs in the telecom regime is suitable for long distance transmission and manipulation, this source is desirable for the demands of quantum communication.
Abstract We demonstrate an ultrabright, narrow-band and frequency-tunable photon-pair source based on cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) which is compatible with atomic transition of rubidium D 2 -line (780 nm) or cesium D 2 -line (852 nm). With the pump beam alternating between a high and a low power phase, the output is switching between the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) and photon-pair generation mode. We utilize the OPO output light to lock the cavity length to maintain the double resonances of signal and idler, as well as to lock the signal frequency to cesium atomic transition. With a type-II phase matching and a double-passed pump scheme such that the cluster frequency spacing is larger than the SPDC bandwidth, the photon-pair output is in a nearly single-mode operation as confirmed by a scanning Fabry–Perot interferometer with its output detected by a photomultiplier. The achieved generation and detection rates are 7.24 × 10 5 and 6142 s −1 mW −1 , respectively. The correlation time of the photon pair is 21.6(2.2) ns, corresponding to a bandwidth of 2 π × 6.6(6) MHz. The spectral brightness is 1.06 × 10 5 s −1 mW −1 MHz −1 . This is a relatively high value under a single-mode operation with the cavity-SPDC scheme. The generated single photons can be readily used in experiments related to atomic quantum memories.
There has been increasing interest in the generation of such photon pairs using a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) source inside an optical cavity to enhance the down-conversion into modes resonant to the cavity, each of the modes having a MHz spectrum. These optical parametric oscillators (OPO) operated far below threshold also provide a well defined spatial mode. Our setup consists of a bow-tie cavity with a periodically poled KTP crystal as nonlinear medium, phase-matched for parametric down-conversion. This photon-pair source is designed to provide photons suitable for interaction with atoms. These photons could be directly used in applications towards a quantum memory of light, like in experiments on slow light or the storage of single photons in EIT media. In this way an optical polarization rotation in an atomic sample could be measured achieving super-resolution.
Photons as flying qubits are ideal carriers of quantum information. However, efficient quantum interfaces which transfer flying into stationary qubits and vice versa are needed to realize complex quantum networks. Stationary qubit systems (atoms, ions, or solid state implementations) couple to photons via characteristic optical transitions. In order to establish key quantum operations, such as coherent photon storage, entanglement swapping, etc., high-quality photons with a tailored spectral, spatial, and temporal mode are needed. One way to generate these photons is to use the stationary qubit systems themselves. Another approach which does not impose limitations in terms of the photon’s wavelength or bandwidth relies on all-optical single photon sources. An example is spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) inside an optical cavity with well-defined linewidth. In SPDC, a pump photon incident on a nonlinear medium is split into two photons of lower energy that are often referred to as signal and idler. Resonating the fluorescent fields, the setup becomes an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) far below the threshold. The usually THz broad emission spectrum of SPDC then follows the Airy function of the resonator. The spectral bandwidth of the generated photons can easily reach values of several MHz, which is comparable to atom resonance linewidths. By introducing additional losses or simply changing the cavity mirror reflectivities the bandwidth is tunable up to several 100 MHz. This is comparable to the bandwidth of single photons generated by e.g. quantum dots.
Single photons and single-photon pairs, inherently nonclassical in their nature, are fundamental elements of quantum sciences and technologies. Here, we propose to realize the nonclassical correlated deterministic photon pairs at the single-photon level for a single atom trapped in bimodal cavities. It is shown that the photon emissions for bimodal cavities exhibit a high single-photon purity and relatively large intracavity photon numbers, which are ascribed to the combination of optical Stark-shift enhanced energy-spectrum anharmonicity and quantum interference suppressed two-photon excitation. Our scheme generates photon-photon pairs with strong photon blockade for cavity modes via constructing a highly tunable cavity-enhanced deterministic parametric down-conversion process. Furthermore, we show that the cross-correlation function between the two cavity modes vastly violates the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality of the classical boundary, which unambiguously demonstrates the nonclassicality of the single-photon pairs. Our result reveals a prominent strategy to generate the high-quality two-mode single-photon sources with strong nonclassical correlation, which could provide versatile applications in distribution of quantum networks, long-distance quantum communication, and fundamental tests of quantum physics.