Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Squeezing in second-harmonic generation using cascaded nonlinear elements
Joji Maeda, Ichiro Matsuda
Abstract
Cascading of quadratic nonlinearity has been attracting great interests for its potential application to parametric devices, such as phase conjugators or effective Kerr media. In most configurations, the device consists of a single nonlinear element with uniform phase-mismatch. Cascading of several elements with different phase-mismatch has been theoretically investigated and predicted to improve performance of the device for classical applications. In this paper, amplitude squeezing in second-harmonic generation using cascaded quadratic nonlinear elements is numerically analyzed. The analyses are based on linearization of nonlinear coupling equations, where interacting fields are approximated as plane waves. Phase-mismatch of each element is varied independently and tolerance of squeezing performance to the fluctuation of the phase-mismatch is also investigated. It is predicted that the performance as a squeezing device can be also superior to that of a single element device, if a proper combination of the phase-mismatch of each element is chosen. For the fundamental wave, the tolerance to the fluctuation of the phase-mismatch will improve by nearly tenfold compared with the single element case. For the harmonic wave, squeezing beyond the limit of perfect phase-matched case (3dB) will be available, though the tolerance to the fluctuation of the phase-mismatch is quite small. These improvements can be attributed to the nonlinear phase rotation that keeps squeezed axis coincided with the amplitude phase in a stable manner.