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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Two-photon conductivity in semiconductors: a new tool for the study of the quantum properties of light

E. Rosencher, Fabien Boitier, Antoine Godard, Claude Fabre

Published Nov 30, 2011• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Two-photon absorption in GaAs occurs once two photon impinge on the semiconductor surface within the virtual state lifetime, i.e. few fs. Two photon conductivity (TPC) in GaAs is thus particulary well fitted to measure photon coincidence rates in the femtosecond range. Using this new TPC technique we have evidenced various original quantum properties of light, such as photon bunching in thermal light and extrabunching of twin beams. This technique opens new avenues in quantum optics, for quantum cryptography, ghost imaging or non linear optics.

DOI
10.1117/12.913974

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Two-photon absorption in GaAs occurs once two photon impinge on the semiconductor surface within the virtual state lifetime, i.e. few fs. Two photon conductivity (TPC) in GaAs is thus particulary well fitted to measure photon coincidence rates in the femtosecond range. Using this new TPC technique we have evidenced various original quantum properties of light, such as photon bunching in thermal light and extrabunching of twin beams. This technique opens new avenues in quantum optics, for quantum cryptography, ghost imaging or non linear optics.
For many years twin beams originating from parametric down-converted light beams have aroused great interest and attention in the photonics community. One particular aspect of the twin beams is their peculiar intensity correlation functions, which are related to the coincidence rate of photon pairs. Here we take advantage of the huge bandwidth offered by two-photon absorption in a semiconductor to quantitatively determine correlation functions of twin beams generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Compared with classical incoherent sources, photon extrabunching is unambiguously and precisely measured, originating from exact coincidence between down-converted pairs of photons, travelling in unison. These results strongly establish that two-photon counting in semiconductors is a powerful tool for the absolute measurement of light beam photon correlations at ultrashort timescales. The second order correlation functiong(2) is used to test quantum correlation properties of light. Here, two-photon counting is used to measure g(2)and an extrabunching effect is demonstrated, providing evidence that two-photon counting is an appropriate method for measuring light beam photon correlations.
Two-photon-counting interferometry has been realized by measuring the electrical current due to two-photon absorption in the space-charge layer of a semiconductor detector located at the output port of an interferometer. We apply this technique to study the correlation properties of twin beams issued from parametric fluorescence. We describe in detail how the different second-order correlation functions (interbeam, intrabeam) can be extracted at the femtosecond time scale from raw data. The values of these correlation functions determined by our experiments are in excellent agreement with theory. More precisely, extrabunching in twin beams is unambiguously demonstrated and theoretically described using two models: a comprehensive multimode quantum optics model and a simpler classical stochastic approach. Given the high brightness of our twin-beam source, both theories yield similar results. Finally, convenient analytical expressions of the correlation functions were derived from both theories, expressions in which we have been able to relate specific terms to accidental and exact coincidences between photons. Two-photon interferometry thus determines to which extent twin photons are twin. This technique should become a useful tool for future quantum optics developments.
Distinct from previous principle-demonstrations, this practical quantum ghost imaging experiment presents the first set of two-photon images captured by a photon counting CCD camera by means of jointly counting 'reflected' photons from the object. In fact, the CCD camera was not 'looking' at the object at all. Rather, the CCD camera was facing the chaotic light source. The output of the CCD camera was used for coincidence registration of the two-photon joint-detection events with another photon counting detector which simply collects all randomly reflected photons from the surface of the object. It is also interesting to find that the observed two-photon images are 'distortion-free', i.e., any disturbances made along the light path has no effect on the quality of the image. These experimental observations are not only useful for practical field-applications, but also important from fundamental point of view. The experiment evidences a rejection of the 'projection shadow' idea in a non-deniable way and further explores the two-photon interference nature of thermal light ghost imaging.