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arXiv:2606.04333 · IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Coincidence-Pumping Upconversion Detector Based on Passively Synchronized Fiber Laser System

Weiyan Kang, Bowen Li, Yan Liang, Qiang Hao, Ming Yan, Kun Huang, Heping Zeng

Published Jan 9, 2020• 14 citations

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrated a high-performance frequency upconversion detector for telecom-band photons based on a passively synchronized fiber laser system. The involved coincidence pumping technique enabled to spectrally convert the pulsed infrared photons into the visible regime with a conversion efficiency of 72%. The overall detection efficiency of the upconversion detector reached to 30% with a low noise equivalent power of 3 × 10-17W/Hz1/2. In contrast to previous demonstrations, the whole upconversion detection system was constructed in an all-polarization-maintaining fiber structure, thus favoring substantial improvement of compactness and robustness. Moreover, the long-term stability was manifested by at least ten-hour operation with a relative fluctuation of count rates as small as 0.26%. The achieved features here would be desirable in many practical applications requiring efficient and robust coherent manipulation of pulsed optical fields by nonlinear frequency conversion.

DOI: 10.1109/lpt.2020.2965146

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Single-photon signals at 1.56 ¿m were converted into the visible region by sum-frequency generation, with synchronous pump pulses at 1.03 ¿m in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal. The signal and pump sources were provided by two synchronized mode-locked fiber lasers at the operation rate of 7.88 MHz. Such a high-speed single-photon upconversion system has shown an overall detection efficiency of 10.4%. The corresponding background noise was measured to be 3.3 × 103s-1. The noise-equivalent power in this scheme was 9.93 × 10-17W/Hz1/2, which was the lowest compared to the other upconversion systems with similar pump and signal wavelengths.

We experimentally demonstrate a compact synchronized fiber laser system that enables fast and efficient coincidence single-photon frequency upconversion detection. Robust synchronization between the pump and signal pulses was achieved with a long-term stability. Moreover, the synchronized pulses were wellmatching in both of the time and spectrum domains. As a result, a coincidence single-photon frequency upconversion was realized with a conversion efficiency of 91.8% and low background counts around 2.8 × 103s-1.

Single-photon frequency upconversion is a nonlinear process where the frequency of the signal photon is translated to the higher frequency with the complete preservation of all the quantum characteristics of the “flying” qubits [1,2]. One promising application of the singlephoton frequency upconversion is converting the infrared photons to the desired spectral regime (usually visible regime) where the high performance detectors are available for sensitive detections [3-6]. The infrared single-photon frequency upconversion detection technique has been successfully used in a variety of applications, including infrared imaging [7] and infrared ultra-sensitive spectroscopy [8,9]. Additionally, such upconversion detector has greatly benefited the applications stringently requiring efficient photon detection in optical quantum computation and communication [10-12]. Furthermore, due to the phase-matching requirement in the frequency upconversion process, the upconversion detectors have some unique features, such as narrow-band wavelength acceptance [13] and polarization sensitivity [14], both of which render them very useful for fiber based quantum systems [15]. In the recent decade, experiments bear that the photon correlation, entanglement, and photon statistics are all well preserved in the coherent frequency upconversion [16-18].

We propose and demonstrate a high efficiency broadband near infrared single-photon upconversion and detection with a broadband pump laser based on sum frequency conversion in the PPLN crystal. By using a pump laser centered at 1040 nm with a spectral bandwidth of 10 nm, the signal single-photons centered at 1562 nm with a broadband bandwidth up to 7.2 nm are frequency-converted from the near infrared to the visible regime. A maximum conversion efficiency of 18.8% is achieved, while the background noise is measured to be only 1.2 × 10−3 counts/pulse. The corresponding spectral linewidth of the upconverted photons is 0.2 nm. This scheme of broadband infrared single-photon upconversion and detection provides potential solutions in infrared laser ranging, broadband infrared imaging and quantum key distribution.

We demonstrate an efficient mid-infrared single-photon detection system with ultra-low background counts based on the frequency upconversion detection technique. The signal photons of 3.39 μm came from a He–Ne laser and the pump beam was provided by a mode-locked ytterbium-doped fiber laser. Taking into account the pulsed pumping and continuous-wave signaling scheme, the peak conversion efficiency of 64% was achieved at an average pump power of 28.3 mW. The corresponding detection efficiency was inferred to be 6.1% with ultra-low background counts of 400 s −1 .

We demonstrate efficient single-photon detection at 1.04 μm with quite low background counts by using the frequency upconversion detection technique with pulsed single-photon source and strong pump field prepared from two synchronized fiber lasers. Temporal and spectral control of the pump and signal lasers enabled an upconversion efficiency of 81.1%. As the system was pumped at a wavelength longer than that of the signal, the corresponding background counts were reduced down to 1.5×103 s−1 due to efficient suppression of parametric fluorescence in the periodic poled lithium niobate crystal.