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Physical Review Letters

Frustrated two-photon creation via interference

Thomas Herzog, John Rarity, Harald Weinfurter, Anton Zeilinger

Published Jan 31, 1994• 183 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate the suppression and enhancement of the spontaneous emission of entangled photon pairs in parametric down-conversion using suitably placed external mirrors. The mirrors permit interference between two possible ways of creating the photon pair. In principle these mirrors can be placed at an arbitrarily large distance from the crystal. The effect is of first order in the intensity of the down-conversion radiation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.72.629

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We demonstrate the suppression and enhancement of the spontaneous emission of entangled photon pairs in parametric down-conversion using suitably placed external mirrors. The mirrors permit interference between two possible ways of creating the photon pair. In principle these mirrors can be placed at an arbitrarily large distance from the crystal. The effect is of first order in the intensity of the down-conversion radiation.
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.
It has been known that suitably placed external mirrors can enhance and suppress emission of entangled photon pairs in spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), known as frustrated two-photon creation via interference. In this work, we report periodic revival of frustrated two-photon creation via interference with SPDC pumped by a continuous-wave (cw) multi-mode laser. As the mirrors are translated relative to the position of the SPDC source, the effect of frustrated two-photon creation via interference gradually dies off. However, as the mirrors are translated even further, the effect of frustrated two-photon creation via interference re-appears periodically. Our theoretical and numerical analyses show that this revival phenomenon is due to the nature of cw multi-mode pump laser. This work clearly demonstrates how the properties of the pump laser, in addition to suitably placed external mirrors, can be used to modify the process of spontaneous two-photon emission.
We use spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a cascade of crystals, driven by a single monochromatic cw pump laser, to study the interference of entangled photon pairs. By changing the distance between the crystals, the observed quantum interference pattern varies continuously from that associated with a longer single crystal to that associated with independent emissions from two distinct crystals. Postselection via spectral filtering suppresses this phenomenon. These findings are expected to advance the field of quantum-state engineering.
Beamlike photon pairs were generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion using a type-II $\ensuremath{\beta}$-BaB2{}_{2}2​O4{}_{4}4​ crystal. A pump laser generated photon pairs when it transmitted through the crystal and was reflected back into the crystal by a mirror to generate more photon pairs. The photon pairs generated when the pump laser first transmitted through the crystal (first photon pairs) were also reflected back into the crystal to overlap with the light path of the photon pairs generated in the second transmission of the pump laser through the crystal (second photon pairs). We observed interference between the first and second photon pairs modulated with a half period of the wavelength of the photon pairs, which demonstrates two-photon interference using the beamlike photon pairs. The fringe period confirms that the observed interference is not classical interference but quantum two-photon interference. Through rotating the angles of quarter-wave plates in the light paths of the photon pairs, we generated beamlike photon pairs with entangled polarization. The phase between the first and second photon pairs could be tuned by changing the position of mirrors reflecting the pump pulses and photon pairs. The fringes of coincidence counts showed that the beamlike photon pairs have polarization entanglement.
Beamlike photon pairs were generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion using a type-II β-BaB 2 O 4 crystal. A pump laser generated photon pairs when it was transmitted through the crystal and was reflected back into the crystal by a mirror to generate more photon pairs. The photon pairs generated when the pump laser first transmitted through the crystal (first photon pairs) were also reflected back into the crystal to overlap with the light path of the photon pairs generated in the second transmission of the pump laser through the crystal (second photon pairs). We observed interference between the first and second photon pairs modulated with a half period of the wavelength of the photon pairs, which demonstrates two-photon interference using the beamlike photon pairs. The fringe period confirms that the observed interference is not classical interference but quantum two-photon interference. Through rotating the angles of quarter-wave plates in the light paths of the photon pairs, we generated beamlike photon pairs with entangled polarization. The phase between the first and second photon pairs could be tuned by changing the position of mirrors reflecting the pump pulses and photon pairs. The fringes of coincidence counts showed that the beamlike photon pairs have polarization entanglement.