Spontaneous and Stimulated Parametric Processes

Shin Arahira, Hitoshi Murai, Hironori Sasaki

In this paper, we report an experimental investigation on the relation between efficiencies of stimulated and spontaneous parametric conversion processes in nonlinear optical devices. We have found that the generation rate of photon pairs in the spontaneous process, μ, and the conversion efficiency in the stimulated process, η, had a simple linear relationship of μ=Kη. The factor of proportionality, K, was found to be 1 pair/Hz/s, regardless of the types of the devices and the parametric processes. This new finding implies that there is a simple relationship, like the Einstein coefficients, between the spontaneous and the stimulated processes of optical nonlinearities.

Avigail Yariv, James E. Pearson

Aziz Kolkıran, G. S. Agarwal

We show how stimulated parametric processes can be employed in experiments on beyond the diffraction limit to overcome the problem of low visibility obtained by using spontaneous down conversion operating in the high gain regime. We further show enhancement of the count rate by several orders when stimulated parametric processes are used. Both the two photon counts and the visibility can be controlled by the phase of the stimulating coherent beam.

Krishna Thyagarajan

O. N. Gadomskiĭ, V. R. Nagibarov

Milica Banić, Marco Liscidini, John E. Sipe

Third-order parametric downconversion (TOPDC) describes a class of nonlinear interactions in which a pump photon is converted into a photon triplet. This process can occur spontaneously or it can be stimulated by seeding fields. Here we show that stimulated TOPDC (StTOPDC) can be exploited for the generation of quantum correlated photon pairs. We model StTOPDC in a microring resonator, predicting observable pair generation rates in a microring engineered for third-harmonic generation, and we examine the peculiar features of this approach when compared with second-order spontaneous parametric downconversion and spontaneous four-wave mixing. We conclude that if the experimental difficulties associated with implementing StTOPDC can be overcome, it may soon be possible to demonstrate this process in resonant integrated devices.