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Applied Physics Letters

Efficient single-photon frequency upconversion at 1.06 μm with ultralow background counts

Huafang Dong, Haifeng Pan, Yao Li, E Wu, Heping Zeng

Published Aug 18, 2008• 43 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrated an efficient single-photon frequency upconversion system for the infrared photons at 1.06 μm with ultralow background counts. By pumping the system at a longer wavelength than that of the single-photon signal, the background counts caused by the pump-induced parametric fluorescence in the nonlinear crystal were reduced markedly. We achieved so far the lowest noise of ∼150/s for a near unity conversion efficiency.

DOI
10.1063/1.2968311

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We demonstrated an efficient single-photon frequency upconversion system for the infrared photons at 1.06 μm with ultralow background counts. By pumping the system at a longer wavelength than that of the single-photon signal, the background counts caused by the pump-induced parametric fluorescence in the nonlinear crystal were reduced markedly. We achieved so far the lowest noise of ∼150/s for a near unity conversion efficiency.
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.
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.
A single-photon signal at 1.55 microm was converted to the visible region by sum-frequency mixing with a strong pumping beam at 1064 nm in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal placed in a diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser cavity. As the intracavity pump laser could be automatically stabilized without cavity lock, robust long-term stability was demonstrated for single-photon frequency upconversion, with a conversion efficiency of 74.3%. Such a stable single-photon upconversion was demonstrated to be efficient and robust for single-photon counting at 1550 nm, and the corresponding background noise was measured at less than 420 x 10(3) s(-1).
We demonstrated few-photon-level mid-infrared imaging at 3.39 μm by efficient frequency up-conversion. The quantum frequency up-conversion efficiency of mid-infrared photons was high to 32.9%, while mid-infrared images were up-converted with the quantum efficiency of 12.5%. The mid-infrared imaging sensitivity was improved by counting the frequency up-conversion photons temporally confined within the time-window of the pump pulse. The frequency up-conversion system induced a background noise of 1.1 × 103 counts per second.
We demonstrate upconversion-assisted single-photon detection for the 1.55-μm telecommunications band based on a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide pumped by a monolithic PPLN optical parametric oscillator. We achieve an internal conversion efficiency of 86%, which results in an overall system detection efficiency of 37%, with excess noise as low as 10(3) counts s(-1). We measure the dark count rate versus the upconversion pump-signal frequency separation and find the results to be consistent with noise photon generation by spontaneous anti-Stokes Raman scattering. These results enable detailed design guidelines for the development of low-noise quantum frequency conversion systems, which will be an important component of fiber-optic quantum networks.