We demonstrate a miniature source of long biphotons utilizing the cluster effect and double-pass pumping in a monolithic doubly resonant parametric down-converter. We obtain a biphoton correlation time of 17.1 ns with a generation rate of 1.10×105 biphotons/(s mW) and an estimated linewidth of 8.3 MHz.
Biphotons and single photons with narrow bandwidths and long coherence times are essential to the realization of long-distance quantum communication (LDQC) and linear optical quantum computing (LOQC). In this Letter, we manipulate the biphoton wave functions of the spontaneous four-wave mixing in a two-level atomic ensemble with a single-laser pump scheme. Our innovative experimental approach enables the generation of biphotons with a sub-MHz bandwidth of 0.36 MHz, a record spectral brightness of 2.28×10^{7} s^{-1} mW^{-1} MHz^{-1}, and a temporally symmetric wave packet at moderate optical depth. The strong nonclassical cross-correlation of the biphotons also enables the observation of heralded sub-MHz-linewidth single photons with a pronounced single-photon nature. The generation of sub-MHz-linewidth biphotons and single photons with a two-level atomic ensemble not only finds applications in quantum repeaters and large cluster states for LDQC and LOQC but also opens up the opportunity to miniaturize the biphoton or single-photon sources for chip-scale quantum technologies.
We report the generation of biphotons, with a temporal full width at the half maximum (FWHM) of 13.4 ± 0.3 µs and a spectral FWHM of 50 ± 1 kHz, via the process of spontaneous four-wave mixing with laser-cooled atoms. The temporal width is the longest, and the spectral linewidth is the narrowest to date. This is also the first biphoton result that obtains a linewidth below 100 kHz, reaching a new milestone. The very long biphoton wave packet has a signal-to-background ratio of 3.4, which violates the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality for classical light by 4.8 folds. Furthermore, we demonstrated a highly tunable-linewidth biphoton source and showed that while the biphoton source’s temporal and spectral width were controllably varied by about 24 folds, its generation rate only changed by less than 15%. A spectral brightness or generation rate per pump power per linewidth of 1.2× 106 pairs/(s mW MHz) was achieved at the temporal width of 13.4 µs. The above results were made possible by the low decoherence rate and high optical depth of the experimental system, as well as a novel scheme of classical fields’ and biphotons’ propagation directions in the experiment. This work has demonstrated a high-efficiency ultranarrow-linewidth biphoton source and has made substantial advancements in quantum technology utilizing heralded single photons.