We have investigated the quantum statistics of entangled photon pairs generated from biexcitons in CuCl single crystals via resonant hyper-parametric scattering. The generation of multi-photon pairs has been first observed under the high excitation power.
We have investigated the excitation-power dependence of polarization-entangled photon pairs generated from a CuCl single crystal using biexciton resonant hyper-parametric scattering. The two-photon polarization density matrix of photon pairs generated from a CuCl single crystal maintained at 10 K was measured under different excitation powers. The measured two-photon polarization density matrix, which corresponds to the two-photon polarization state, changes with an increase in the excitation power. The evaluations of the tangle and the linear entropy obtained from the measured density matrix indicate that the two-photon polarization density matrix can be expressed as the mixed state of an ideal state and a totally mixed state, and the mixture ratio of the totally mixed state increases as the excitation density increases. The variations of the density matrix and the mixture ratio with the excitation power originate from the generation of the multiple photon pairs. Furthermore, a numerical calculation considering simultaneous detection efficiency was able to reproduce the experimental results.
We have investigated the polarization entanglement between photon pairs generated from a biexciton in a CuCl single crystal via resonant hyperparametric scattering. The pulses of a high repetition pump are seen to provide improved statistical accuracy and the ability to test Bell's inequality. Our results clearly violate the inequality and thus manifest the quantum entanglement and nonlocality of the photon pairs. We also analyzed the quantum state of our photon pairs using quantum state tomography.
We have prepared SiO 2 /CuCl layered structures and investigated the structural and optical properties, focusing on the observation of biexciton-resonant hyper-parametric scattering that is a promising process to generate entangled photons. A crystalline CuCl film, which is the active layer, was grown on an Al 2 O 3 substrate by a vacuum deposition method, and then an amorphous SiO 2 film as the passivation layer for hygroscopic CuCl was prepared by an rf-magnetron sputtering method. X-ray diffraction patterns and optical spectra of excitons indicate that the growth of the SiO 2 -passivation layer does not degrade the crystallinity of the underlying CuCl thin film. It has been demonstrated that the biexciton-resonant hyper-parametric scattering is clearly observable in the SiO 2 /CuCl layered structure.
We have constructed a theoretical framework of biexciton-resonant hyperparametric scattering for pursuit of high-power and high-quality generation of entangled-photon pairs. Our framework is applicable to the nano-to-bulk crossover regime where the center-of-mass motions of excitons and biexcitons are confined and material surroundings and the polarization correlation of generated photons can be considered. We have analyzed the generation of ultraviolet entangled photons from CuCl film with and without dielectric microcavity and revealed that in the nano-to-bulk crossover regime we generally get a high performance from the viewpoint of statistical accuracy and the generation efficiency can be enhanced by the optical cavity while maintaining the high performance. The nano-to-bulk crossover regime has a variety of degrees of freedom to control the entangled-photon generation, and the scattering spectra explicitly reflect quantized exciton-photon coupled modes in finite structures.