Optics Letters
Slow-light enhanced correlated photon pair generation in a silicon photonic crystal waveguide
Chunle Xiong, Christelle Monat, Alex S. Clark, Christian Grillet, Graham D. Marshall, Michael J. Steel, Juntao Li, Liam O’Faoláin, Thomas F. Krauss, John Rarity, Benjamin J. Eggleton
Abstract
We report the generation of correlated photon pairs in the telecom C-band at room temperature from a dispersion-engineered silicon photonic crystal waveguide. The spontaneous four-wave mixing process producing the photon pairs is enhanced by slow-light propagation enabling an active device length of less than 100 μm. With a coincidence to accidental ratio of 12.8 at a pair generation rate of 0.006 per pulse, this ultracompact photon pair source paves the way toward scalable quantum information processing realized on-chip.