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Applied Physics B

Absolute brightness measurements in the terahertz frequency range using vacuum and thermal fluctuations as references

G. Kh. Kitaeva, P. V. Yakunin, Vladimir V. Kornienko, Alexander N. Penin

Published Feb 5, 2014• 27 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/s00340-014-5779-0

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In this paper we present schemes of experimental setups for the radiation spectral brightness measurements in the range of 0.6 - 5 (mu) for N varying from 10-1 to 102 (if, for example, (lambda) equals 1 (mu) , this range of N corresponds to the brightness temperature range from 6 (DOT) 103 to 106 K), and for photomultipliers quantum efficiency measurements in the range of 0.4 - 5 (mu) with a dynamical range 10 - 1012 photon/sec and accuracy not worse than 1%. The new measurement methods are based on the utilization of the parametric light scattering phenomenon which is a spontaneous decay of laser pump photons in correlated photon pairs in crystals with quadratic nonlinear susceptibility. The first of two methods allows measurement of the radiation spectral brightness N in absolute units ('photons per mode') in visible and infrared range. The quantity N is related to the energetic brightness spectral density B through the equation B equals (hc2/(lambda) 5)N, where h is the Plank constant, c - the light velocity, (lambda) - the wavelength. The method is absolute and does not require any reference source or detector of radiation. Quantum noise of a parametric down-convertor, caused by the zero vacuum fluctuations with an effective brightness Nvac equals 1 photon per mode, is the reference in this case. The second method concerns the quantum efficiency of photodetectors determination, and it is based on the connection between the statistics of photocurrent and the radiation which causes it. The parametric scattering is a unique source of rather intensive and directed radiation flow consisting of photon pairs. Such a flow can be used to determine the absolute quantum efficiency of photodetectors.
The black body remains the most prominent source of light for absolute radiometry. Its main alternative, synchrotron radiation, requires costly and large facilities. Quantum optics offers a new radiometric source: parametric down-conversion (PDC), a nonlinear optical process, in which pairwise photon correlations enable absolute calibration of photodetectors. Since the emission rate crucially depends on the brightness of the electromagnetic field, quantum-mechanical fluctuations of the vacuum7 can be seen as a seed of spontaneous PDC, and their amplitude is a natural radiometric standard. Thus, they allow for the calibration of the spectral radiance of light sources by measuring the ratio between seeded and unseeded PDC. Here, we directly use the frequency spectrum of the electromagnetic vacuum to trigger spontaneous PDC and employ the generated light to infer the spectral response of a spectrometer over a broad spectral range. Then, we deduce the absolute quantum efficiency from the spectral shape of PDC in the high-gain regime, without relying on a seed or reference detector. Our results compare well with the ones obtained with a reference lamp, demonstrating a promising primary radiation standard.
Frequency-angular distributions of optical signals generated via spontaneous parametric downconversion with the Stokes idler frequency shifts 0.2–5 THz are studied simultaneously with the same distributions in the anti-Stokes range while the nonlinear Mg:LiNbO3 crystal is cooled from 300 K to 4.2 K. The temperature dependencies of the angular distributions at fixed idler frequencies are analyzed using a theoretical Klyshko–Kirchhoff approach with account of thermal field fluctuations and inherent crystal absorption at terahertz frequencies. Although all the measurements are performed in the optical range, we demonstrate how such analysis enables to predict the temperature behavior of the total number of spontaneous parametric downconversion-generated idler photons in the terahertz range, the temperature variation of the optical-terahertz biphoton function, and to study the contributions of classical thermal and pure quantum field fluctuations to parameters of biphotons. It is shown that the temperature-induced growth of the numbers of signal and idler photons and their non-normalized correlation function is provided by overwhelming increase in classical fluctuations, while the pure quantum contributions to these parameters are not so sensitive to the crystal temperature.