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arXiv:2001.00524 · Physical Review Applied

Nonlinear Photon Pair Generation in a Highly Dispersive Medium

David J. Starling, Jacob Poirier, Michael Fanto, Jeffrey A. Steidle, Christopher C. Tison, Gregory A. Howland, Stefan F. Preble

Published Apr 29, 2020• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The generation of single photons serves as the backbone for tasks in quantum information processing. Generating quantum electromagnetic fields on highly dispersive platforms is technically challenging, though, due to phase-matching constraints. The authors consider the silicon photonic platform, due to its potential scalability, and demonstrate that phase matching is possible with highly dispersive transverse-magnetic polarized light, via nonlinear coupling of two racetrack-style microresonators. With its brightness and tunability, this source may have a significant impact on creation of entangled photons in photonic integrated circuits, for use in quantum information and communication.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.13.041005

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The generation of single photons serves as the backbone for tasks in quantum information processing. Generating quantum electromagnetic fields on highly dispersive platforms is technically challenging, though, due to phase-matching constraints. The authors consider the silicon photonic platform, due to its potential scalability, and demonstrate that phase matching is possible with highly dispersive transverse-magnetic polarized light, via nonlinear coupling of two racetrack-style microresonators. With its brightness and tunability, this source may have a significant impact on creation of entangled photons in photonic integrated circuits, for use in quantum information and communication.
Photon pair generation in silicon photonic integrated circuits relies on four wave mixing via the third order nonlinearity. Due to phase matching requirements and group velocity dispersion, this method has typically required TE polarized light. Here, we demonstrate TM polarized photon pair production in linearly uncoupled silicon resonators with more than an order of magnitude more dispersion than previous work. We achieve measured rates above 2.8 kHz and a heralded second order correlation of . This method enables phase matching in dispersive media and paves the way for novel entanglement generation in silicon photonic devices
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We present recent results from work conducted in the RIT Integrated Photonics Group in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. We will discuss the generation of high-brightness TM-polarized photon pairs which were generated via nonlinearly coupled resonators. This source produces high quality heralded single photons and provides enhanced tunability to compensate for self-phase modulation and dispersion. Additionally, we will present a two-photon interference experiment using a resonant hong-ou-mandel interferometer, which has a compact footprint when compared to standard Mach-Zehnder interferometers. This new design is capable of high visibility. We conclude with some recent results related to low-loss, high-dimensional packaging for entangled photon applications.
Chip-scale integrated photonic circuits provide an attractive platform for the implementation of many quantum photonic technologies ranging from precise metrology to secure communication and quantum computation. In particular, silicon photonic platforms support micron-scale nonlinear optical sources of non-classical light which can be mass manufactured using the robust fabrication processes pioneered by the CMOS microelectronics industry. Integration of these quantum photonic sources with high-performance classical photonic devices on the same chip is required for truly scalable quantum information technologies. Integrated nonlinear resonators are investigated as sources of quantum mechanically correlated photon pair sources. An all-order dispersion engineering method is presented as a robust design synthesis for micoring sources. In addition, a novel concept of coupled mode dispersion compensation is proposed and demonstrated, providing significantly improved performance characteristics of resonant four-wave mixing sources. Next a photon pair source is demonstrated in a commercial CMOS microelectronics process opening the door to future integration of quantum photonics with electronic logic and control circuits. Classical nonlinear optical measurements of stimulated four-wave mixing are used for the first time to accurately predict the quantum correlations from the same device operating in the photon pair regime. Next the first demonstration of fully on-chip pump rejection is demonstrated with over 95 dB pump extinction improving the figures of merit from previous demonstrations by multiple orders of magnitude, including losses, detected pair rates and size. Finally, proposals for introducing novel degrees of freedom provided by an integrated platform are presented for further improving the performance of both photon pair and classical nonlinear optical sources.
Correlated photon-pair sources are key components for quantum computing, networking, and sensing applications. Integrated photonics has enabled chip-scale sources using nonlinear processes, producing high-rate entanglement with sub-100 microwatt power at telecom wavelengths. Many quantum systems operate in the visible or near-infrared ranges, necessitating broadband visible-telecom entangled-pair sources for connecting remote systems via entanglement swapping and teleportation. This study evaluates broadband entanglement generation through spontaneous four-wave mixing in various nonlinear integrated photonic materials, including silicon nitride, lithium niobate, aluminum gallium arsenide, indium gallium phosphide, and gallium nitride. We demonstrate how geometric dispersion engineering facilitates phase-matching for each platform and reveals unexpected results, such as robust designs to fabrication variations and a Type-1 cross-polarized phase-matching condition for III-V materials that expands the operational bandwidth. With experimentally attainable parameters, integrated photonic microresonators with optimized designs can achieve pair generation rates greater than ~1 THz/mW2^22.
Developing a high-quality, bright source of polarization-entangled photon pairs on CMOS-compatible integrated platforms, such as silicon or silicon nitride, remains a significant challenge. Here, a novel silicon chip-based nonlinear Sagnac interferometer, which mainly integrates a bidirectionally pumped microring resonator with a polarization-splitting rotator, was proposed to generate polarization-entangled photon pairs. By pumping the system with a pulsed laser at 1550 nm and a power of 78 μW, polarization-entangled photon pairs in the telecom C-band were produced through spontaneous four-wave mixing, achieving a state-of-the-art brightness of 1.6 × 107 pairs s−1 GHz−1 mW−2. Using an off-chip polarization analyzer, the visibility of polarization-correlation interference fringe was measured to be 96.6%. Quantum state tomography revealed a fidelity of 0.958 for the maximally entangled state produced by the source. These exceptional performance metrics, combined with the integrability of the device, make it highly suitable for advanced quantum applications, particularly in multi-user entanglement-based quantum communication networks.