In this paper we propose and demonstrate a novel technique to suppress pump in four-wave mixing experiments. The residual pump powers at the fiber output are reflected by fiber-Bragg gratings (FBGs), amplified by an EDFA to compensate for pump losses in feedback path, and fed back to the fiber. With the increase in total input power to the fiber, the ratio of signal and idler to pump increases. Additional optical filters can then be used for further pump suppression. In our experiments, two pump waves of wavelengths 1549.70nm and 1549.85nm are combined using a 3dB coupler and fed to a highly-nonlinear fiber (HNLF) of length 1km, nonlinear coefficient of 12.4/W-km, and zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of 1513nm. Without feedback, we obtained the signal and idler to pump ratios of -21dB and -20.6dB respectively. After filtering by FBGs of 95% reflectivity and unity gain feedback, the ratio becomes - 14.1dB and -12.2dB respectively. When the residual pumps are amplified and fed back to the HNLF, the ratio improves to -7.5dB and -8.6dB indicating the potential of our method.
In this paper we propose and demonstrate a novel technique to suppress pump in four-wave mixing experiments. The residual pump powers at the fiber output are reflected by fiber-Bragg gratings (FBGs), amplified by an EDFA to compensate for pump losses in feedback path, and fed back to the fiber. With the increase in total input power to the fiber, the ratio of signal and idler to pump increases. Additional optical filters can then be used for further pump suppression. In our experiments, two pump waves of wavelengths 1549.70nm and 1549.85nm are combined using a 3dB coupler and fed to a highly-nonlinear fiber (HNLF) of length 1km, nonlinear coefficient of 12.4/W-km, and zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of 1513nm. Without feedback, we obtained the signal and idler to pump ratios of -21dB and -20.6dB respectively. After filtering by FBGs of 95% reflectivity and unity gain feedback, the ratio becomes - 14.1dB and -12.2dB respectively. When the residual pumps are amplified and fed back to the HNLF, the ratio improves to -7.5dB and -8.6dB indicating the potential of our method.
Single photon sources are a key element for quantum computing, quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum communications. In particular, producing single photons at telecommunications wavelengths is valuable for QKD protocols and would enable realizing the quantum internet. The preferred method for their generation has long been spontaneous down conversion in bulk crystals, which suffers from connection loss to fiber networks. In-fiber spontaneous four-wave mixing provides a viable alternative as a photon pair source due to being compatible with existing fiber networks. We present an all-fiber photon pair source based on degenerate four-wave mixing in a 400 m Highly-Nonlinear fiber, with signal and idler wavelengths generated at 1552.5 nm and 1557 nm respectively. The source consists of CW pump laser operating at 1554.75 nm, which is slightly detuned from the zero group velocity dispersion wavelength into the normal dispersion regime. After pair generation in the highly-nonlinear fiber, three arrayed waveguide gratings are employed to spatially separate signal and idler, and provides a 120 dB pump power reduction. Firstly the source is modelled and experimentally characterized in the well known classical regime of stimulated four-wave mixing. The effect of fiber cooling on spontaneous Raman scattering is modelled and characterized, and a 30% reduction in spontaneous emission is found when cooling the fiber to -77°C. In the low power regime the coincidence to accidental count ratio is simulated and measured. An increase in the coincidence to accidental count ratio is observed when cooling the fiber.
We investigate the possibilities of controlling and exploiting the spatial evolution of the four-wave mixing (FWM) idler in a fiber optical parametric amplifier, considering standard single-mode fibers. We found that the use of high pump powers, for a given requirement on the signal extinction ratio and frequency separation between pump and signal, can considerably affect the optical signal-to-noise ratio on the idler frequency due to the residual modulation. We observe that by choosing an opportune length of the fiber, the residual idler modulation can be suppressed or counteracted by an increase of optical average power. Thus, a proper choice of the transmission fiber length can considerably improve the remodulated idler characteristics.
We demonstrate an all-fiber broadband photon pair source based on four wave mixing (FWM) process in dispersion flattened highly non-linear fiber (DF-HNLF). The fiber exhibits a zero dispersion slope near 1550 nm, allowing phase-matched FWM over entire S, C, and L bands and thus efficient generation of signal and idler photons. A comparative theoretical study between conventional dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) and DF-HNLF highlights the spectral range differences in the generation of photon pairs. We measure coincidence counts at three different sets of wavelengths. To study the effects of Raman scattering, which acts as noise source in these types of fibers, we calculate the correlationg(2)(τ)at different pump powers. We use stimulated emission tomography to characterize the generation of photon pairs across the S, C, and L bands. We show that DF-HNLF is an ideal medium for generating correlated photons over a broad spectral range (>100nm), making it suitable for frequency-multiplexed quantum communication systems. We estimate the photon pair generation efficiency to be 0.05mW−2/pulse.
Correlated single photons provide a means to drive applications such as quantum computing and quantum communications. Correlated single photons can be generated via parametric down conversion in second–order nonlinear media or spontaneous four–wave mixing in third–order nonlinear media. In particular, complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology allows for seamless integration with electronics, providing the potential for a completely on-chip solution for quantum information processing. Ultra–silicon–rich nitride platform is a backend CMOS compatible platform, that has already been used to obtain high gain optical parametric amplification, wideband supercontinuum and enhanced nonlinearity in photonic crystal waveguides due to its large nonlinearity. In this work, we demonstrate correlated photon pair generation based on spontaneous four–wave mixing using ultra-silicon-rich nitride waveguides for the application in CMOS–based optical quantum technologies. A CW pump at a wavelength of 1555.747nm amplified using an EDFA is filtered through five wavelength division multiplexers (WDM) with a bandwidth of 1.2nm, providing 175dB suppression of EDFA induced pump sideband noise. The filtered quasi–TE pump, adjusted using a fiber polarization controller, is coupled into an ultra–silicon–rich nitride waveguide using a lensed fiber. A SiO2 cladded waveguide with a width of 550nm and height of 300nm possesses a high nonlinear parameter of 530W^-1/m with anomalous dispersion necessary for spontaneous four-wave mixing. The waveguide output is coupled into a lensed fiber and 7 cascaded WDMs are used to provide 245dB of residual pump filtration. The pump–suppressed output is spectrally separated into signal/idler part using WDMs. We refer to lower (higher) frequency photon as the signal (idler). The spontaneously generated signal and idler photons are filtered using cascaded tunable band pass filters (OTF) centered at 1571.24nm and cascaded WDMs centered at 1540.56nm, respectively. The bandwidth of the tunable OTF and WDM is 0.5nm and 1.2nm, therefore the correlated signal/idler photons are observed within the bandwidth window of 0.5nm induced by the OTF. The signal and idler photons are measured using InGaAs/InP avalanche photodetectors. The time correlation between signal and idler photons is obtained using a time interval analyzer with a detection efficiency of 20% and dead time of 15μs.The time bin is set to 81ps and the photon collection time is 240s. The coincidence peak is located ~11ns in the time–bin histogram due to the optical-path difference between the tunable OTF and WDM at respective signal and idler sides. The experimental raw coincidence counts (Hz), calculated by subtracting the accidental rate from the coincidence peak, show a quadratic increase with respect to coupled pump power. At the maximum coupled power of 5mW, the raw coincidence count is ~1Hz. We achieve a raw coincidence–to–accidental ratio (CAR) of up to 3. Therefore, we succeeded to observe correlated photon pair generation based on spontaneous four–wave mixing using the ultra–silicon–rich-nitride waveguide as a CMOS compatible platform, for future applications in quantum technologies.
Q uantum entanglement refers to the nonclassical dependency of physically separated quantum systems. It is an essential resource that must be freely available for implementing many of the novel functions of quantum information processing, such as database searching, clock synchronization, teleportation, computing and cryptography.1 The efficient generation and transmission of quantum entanglement is therefore of prime importance. With the ubiquitous standard optical fiber serving as the transmission medium and the widespread availability of efficient active and passive fiber devices, technological synergy between the generation and propagation components of the overall quantum network can be achieved by deploying sources of entanglement that rely on the nonlinearity of the fiber itself. Such fiber-based sources of quantum entanglement would also have the advantage of modal purity over their crystal counterparts,2,3 which is very important for realizing complex networks that involve many quantum operations. In our quest to develop fiber-based devices for quantum information processing, we have recently demonstrated an allfiber source of quantum-correlated photon pairs.4 The operating physical mechanism in this source is nondegenerate fourphoton mixing, wherein two pump photons scatter through the Kerr nonlinearity of the fiber to create simultaneous signal and idler photons. Our experiment is conducted near the zero-dispersion wavelength of standard dispersion-shifted fiber, where such scattering is enhanced owing to phase matching of the photon wave functions. It must be pointed out here that in a conventional wavelength-divisionmultiplexed classical optical communication line, one strives to suppress the fourphoton or four-wave mixing process, which otherwise causes cross talk between the wavelength channels and sets limits on the total data capacity of the communication line. In our experiment, the four-photon mixing takes place in a nonlinear-fiber Sagnac interferometer (NFSI), which we previously used to generate quantum-correlated twin beams in the fiber.5 The pump is a mode-locked train of ~3-ps-long pulses. The pulsed operation serves two important purposes: the NFSI amplifier can be operated at low average powers and the production of the signal/ idler fluorescence photons is confined to well-defined temporal windows, allowing use of a gated detection scheme to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. To measure the nonclassical (i.e., quantum) correlations between the signal and the idler photons, one must effectively suppress the pump photons from reaching the detectors. Since a typical pump pulse contains ~108 photons and we are interested in detecting ~0.01 signal (idler) photons/pulse, a pump-to-signal (idler) rejection ratio in excess of 100 dB is required. We achieved this specification by sending the fluorescence photons through a free-space double-grating spectral filter that separates the signal and idler photons from each other and from the pump photons not rejected by the NFSI. To demonstrate the quantum nature of the four-photon scattering at the single photon level, we assembled a photonFigure 1.C oincidence rates as a function of the single-photon rates in two different cases: signalidler fluorescence produced by a pump pulse (diamonds) and signal-idler fluorescence produced by two consecutive pump pulses (triangles). T he line represents the calculated accidental counts. T he inset shows a plot of the detected idler photons as a function of the injected pump photons (hollow circles). A second-order polynomial is shown to fit the experimental data. T he contributions of the dark counts, linear scattering and quadratic scattering are plotted separately as well. counting apparatus for detecting the signal and idler photons in coincidence. This apparatus is based on commercial InGaAs avalanche photodiodes operating in the gated Geiger mode.4 In the inset in Fig. 1, we show the number of scattered photons, NS, versus the number of pump photons, NP, injected into the NFSI. We fit the experimental data with a second-order polynomial fit, including the number of dark counts during the gate interval, ND. The fit clearly shows that the quadratic scattering ( ∝NP) in the fiber can dominate over the residual linear scattering ( ∝NP) of the pump, owing to imperfect filtering. The main body of Fig. 1 shows the coincidence-counting results. The diamonds represent the rate of coincidence counts versus the rate of the signal (idler) photons generated during the same pump pulse. The triangles represent the measured coincidence rate versus the signalphoton count rate when the signal is delayed with respect to the idler by one pulse period. For two independent photon sources, each with a count rate RS <<1, the accidental coincidence rate RC is given by RC = RS 2, regardless of the photon statistics of the sources. This quadratic relation is plotted as the solid line in Fig. 1, which fits the delayed-coincidence data (triangles) very well. These measurements show that while the fluorescence photons produced by the adjacent pump pulses are independent, those coming from the same pump pulse show a strong correlation, which is a signature of their non-classical behavior. This work was supported by the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program administered by the Army Research Office under Grants DAAD19-00-1-0177 and DAAD19-00-1-0469, and by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under Grant N00014-91-J-1268.
We report an all-fiber-based experimental setup to generate a correlated photon-pair comb using Four Wave Mixing (FWM) in Highly non-linear fiber (HNLF). Temporal correlations of the generated photons were confirmed through coincidence measurements. We observed a maximum of 32 kcps, with a coincidence to accidental ratio of17±1. To further understand the underlying processes, we also simulated a generalized FWM event involving the interaction between an arbitrary frequency comb and a Continuous Wave (CW) pump. non-linear dynamics through the HNLF were modelled using Schrödinger propagation equations, with numerical predictions agreeing with our experimental results.