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AIP conference proceedings

Frustrated Two-Photon Creation in a Time-Dependent Cavity

David A. Branning, Luigi Accardi, Guillaume Adenier, Christopher A. Fuchs, Gregg S. Jaeger, Andrei Yu. Khrennikov, Jan-Åke Larsson, Stig Stenholm

Published Jan 1, 2009• 1 citation

Abstract

In the process of parametric downconversion, a high‐energy photon is annihilated to create a pair of lower‐energy photons within a nonlinear dielectric material. It was shown some years ago that this process can be modified by quantum interference, by reflecting the high‐energy and low‐energy light back into the dielectric. The suppression or enhancement of the downconversion rate is analogous to the phenomenon of inhibited spontaneous emission that occurs when an excited atom is placed in a cavity whose allowed modes cannot support the spontaneous emission. In this case, the atom remains excited—but then, how does it interact with the cavity? If the cavity mirror were replaced by a detector, could photons be counted immediately, or only after some time delay? Our experiment uses spontaneous downconversion, a 2‐m long cavity, and a fast optical switch to obtain the answer.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3109941

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In the process of parametric downconversion, a high‐energy photon is annihilated to create a pair of lower‐energy photons within a nonlinear dielectric material. It was shown some years ago that this process can be modified by quantum interference, by reflecting the high‐energy and low‐energy light back into the dielectric. The suppression or enhancement of the downconversion rate is analogous to the phenomenon of inhibited spontaneous emission that occurs when an excited atom is placed in a cavity whose allowed modes cannot support the spontaneous emission. In this case, the atom remains excited—but then, how does it interact with the cavity? If the cavity mirror were replaced by a detector, could photons be counted immediately, or only after some time delay? Our experiment uses spontaneous downconversion, a 2‐m long cavity, and a fast optical switch to obtain the answer.

We present an experimental realization of a "sudden mirror replacement" thought experiment, in which a mirror that is inhibiting spontaneous emission is quickly replaced by a photodetector. The question is, can photons be counted immediately, or only after a retardation time that allows the emitter to couple to the changed modes of the cavity, and for light to propagate to the detector? Our results, obtained with a parametric downconverter, are consistent with the cavity QED prediction that photons can be counted immediately, and are in conflict with the retardation time prediction.

A theory of spontaneous parametric downconversion in a nonlinear crystal that is placed inside a microcavity in the degenerate, collinear, type I arrangement is given. Both atom and field variables are fully quantized. The photon-correlation function for the entangled photon pairs produced has a much longer correlation time (~0.4 ns) than that without the cavity (of the order of subpicoseconds) and can be measured directly with fast photodetectors. We also calculate the resonant suppression and enhancement in the photon-pair count rate as a function of cavity length. The results are in qualitative agreement with recent downconversion experiments [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2556 (1999)] in a 4.5-mm cavity.

We consider an excited atom in a cavity such that spontaneous emission is inhibited, and address the question of whether a sudden replacement of one of the cavity mirrors by a detector can result in a photon count immediately or only after some retardation time. The feasibility of an experiment of this type has led to considerable discussion as to its outcome. Following a brief summary of the conflicting arguments, we show that it is possible to count a photon immediately following the substitution of a photodetector for a mirror.

In this paper we study photon pairs generated in a nonlinear cavity composed of a nonlinear crystal surrounded by mirrors, by the process of spotaneous parametric downconversion. We analyze two different regimes: singly-resonant cavities where the signal and idler modes are resonant and doubly-resonant cavities where the pump mode is also resonant. We present analytic expressions for the joint spectral amplitude in these two cases and study the reduction in emission bandwidth as the cavity coefficient finesse is increased. We also study the enhancement of the source brightness from the presence of the cavity.