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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics

High-Speed Single-Photon Frequency Upconversion With Synchronous Pump Pulses

Xiaorong Gu, Yao Li, Haifeng Pan, E Wu, Heping Zeng

Published Jan 1, 2009• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Single-photon signals at 1.56 ¿m were converted into the visible region by sum-frequency generation, with synchronous pump pulses at 1.03 ¿m in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal. The signal and pump sources were provided by two synchronized mode-locked fiber lasers at the operation rate of 7.88 MHz. Such a high-speed single-photon upconversion system has shown an overall detection efficiency of 10.4%. The corresponding background noise was measured to be 3.3 × 103s-1. The noise-equivalent power in this scheme was 9.93 × 10-17W/Hz1/2, which was the lowest compared to the other upconversion systems with similar pump and signal wavelengths.

DOI
10.1109/jstqe.2009.2024329

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Single-photon signals at 1.56 ¿m were converted into the visible region by sum-frequency generation, with synchronous pump pulses at 1.03 ¿m in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal. The signal and pump sources were provided by two synchronized mode-locked fiber lasers at the operation rate of 7.88 MHz. Such a high-speed single-photon upconversion system has shown an overall detection efficiency of 10.4%. The corresponding background noise was measured to be 3.3 × 103s-1. The noise-equivalent power in this scheme was 9.93 × 10-17W/Hz1/2, which was the lowest compared to the other upconversion systems with similar pump and signal wavelengths.
We demonstrate efficient single-photon detection at 1.04 μm with quite low background counts by using the frequency upconversion detection technique with pulsed single-photon source and strong pump field prepared from two synchronized fiber lasers. Temporal and spectral control of the pump and signal lasers enabled an upconversion efficiency of 81.1%. As the system was pumped at a wavelength longer than that of the signal, the corresponding background counts were reduced down to 1.5×103 s−1 due to efficient suppression of parametric fluorescence in the periodic poled lithium niobate crystal.
A single-photon signal at 1.55 microm was converted to the visible region by sum-frequency mixing with a strong pumping beam at 1064 nm in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal placed in a diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser cavity. As the intracavity pump laser could be automatically stabilized without cavity lock, robust long-term stability was demonstrated for single-photon frequency upconversion, with a conversion efficiency of 74.3%. Such a stable single-photon upconversion was demonstrated to be efficient and robust for single-photon counting at 1550 nm, and the corresponding background noise was measured at less than 420 x 10(3) s(-1).
We experimentally demonstrate a compact synchronized fiber laser system that enables fast and efficient coincidence single-photon frequency upconversion detection. Robust synchronization between the pump and signal pulses was achieved with a long-term stability. Moreover, the synchronized pulses were wellmatching in both of the time and spectrum domains. As a result, a coincidence single-photon frequency upconversion was realized with a conversion efficiency of 91.8% and low background counts around 2.8 × 103s-1.
We demonstrate efficient single-photon detection at 1.55 microm by means of sum-frequency mixing with a strong pump at 1.064 microm in periodically poled lithium niobate followed by photon counting in the visible region. This scheme offers significant advantages over existing InGaAs photon counters: continuous-wave operation, higher detection efficiency, higher counting rates, and no afterpulsing. We achieved single-photon upconversion efficiency of 90% at 21.6 W of circulating power in a resonant pump cavity with a 400-mW Nd:YAG laser. We observed high background counts at strong circulating pump powers due to efficient upconversion of pump-induced fluorescence photons.
We propose and demonstrate a high efficiency broadband near infrared single-photon upconversion and detection with a broadband pump laser based on sum frequency conversion in the PPLN crystal. By using a pump laser centered at 1040 nm with a spectral bandwidth of 10 nm, the signal single-photons centered at 1562 nm with a broadband bandwidth up to 7.2 nm are frequency-converted from the near infrared to the visible regime. A maximum conversion efficiency of 18.8% is achieved, while the background noise is measured to be only 1.2 × 10−3 counts/pulse. The corresponding spectral linewidth of the upconverted photons is 0.2 nm. This scheme of broadband infrared single-photon upconversion and detection provides potential solutions in infrared laser ranging, broadband infrared imaging and quantum key distribution.
We experimentally demonstrated a high-performance frequency upconversion detector for telecom-band photons based on a passively synchronized fiber laser system. The involved coincidence pumping technique enabled to spectrally convert the pulsed infrared photons into the visible regime with a conversion efficiency of 72%. The overall detection efficiency of the upconversion detector reached to 30% with a low noise equivalent power of 3 × 10-17W/Hz1/2. In contrast to previous demonstrations, the whole upconversion detection system was constructed in an all-polarization-maintaining fiber structure, thus favoring substantial improvement of compactness and robustness. Moreover, the long-term stability was manifested by at least ten-hour operation with a relative fluctuation of count rates as small as 0.26%. The achieved features here would be desirable in many practical applications requiring efficient and robust coherent manipulation of pulsed optical fields by nonlinear frequency conversion.