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

Temporal pure single photons generated from time-frequency entangled biphotons

Peng Qian, Zhejie Gu, J. F. Chen, Weiping Zhang

Published Nov 3, 2016• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Narrow-band time-frequency entangled biphotons are generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atom clouds. The coherence time of the entangled biphotons can be extended to sub-microseconds by the slow light effect. The temporal wavefunction of the biphotons can be manipulated through modulating the spectral or spatial mode of the controlling laser beams. Concerning a pair of entangled biphoton and the resulting heralded single photon, it was commonly believed that, time-frequency entanglement damages the temporal purity of the single photon. However, the case is totally different for biphotons with long coherence time which is far beyond the time resolution of single-photondetectors. We demonstrate that, the single photon heralded from these time-frequency entangled biphotons is in a pure temporal state. Therefore, single photons are able to be shaped through the time-frequency entanglement with their partner photons, while the single photons could be found to be still in a pure state and thus useful for quantum information processing and communication technology.

DOI
10.1117/12.2245435

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Narrow-band time-frequency entangled biphotons are generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atom clouds. The coherence time of the entangled biphotons can be extended to sub-microseconds by the slow light effect. The temporal wavefunction of the biphotons can be manipulated through modulating the spectral or spatial mode of the controlling laser beams. Concerning a pair of entangled biphoton and the resulting heralded single photon, it was commonly believed that, time-frequency entanglement damages the temporal purity of the single photon. However, the case is totally different for biphotons with long coherence time which is far beyond the time resolution of single-photondetectors. We demonstrate that, the single photon heralded from these time-frequency entangled biphotons is in a pure temporal state. Therefore, single photons are able to be shaped through the time-frequency entanglement with their partner photons, while the single photons could be found to be still in a pure state and thus useful for quantum information processing and communication technology.
The temporal purity of single photons is crucial to the indistinguishability of independent photon sources for the fundamental study of the quantum nature of light and the development of photonic technologies. Currently, the technique for single photons heralded from time-frequency entangled biphotons created in nonlinear crystals does not guarantee the temporal-quantum purity, except using spectral filtering. Nevertheless, an entirely different situation is anticipated for narrow-band biphotons with a coherence time far longer than the time resolution of a single-photon detector. Here we demonstrate temporally pure single photons with a coherence time of 100 ns, directly heralded from the time-frequency entangled biphotons generated by spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atomic ensembles, without any supplemented filters or cavities. A near-perfect purity and indistinguishability are both verified through Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference using single photons from two independent cold atomic ensembles. The time-frequency entanglement provides a route to manipulate the pure temporal state of the single-photon source.
Driven by the desire of narrow-band photon pairs source, in this Mphil thesis work, we demonstrate the generation of photon pairs with controllable coherence time up to 1.72 microseconds, using spontaneous four-wave mixing with electromagnetically induced transparency in a laser-cooled atomic ensemble with an optical depth (OD) as high as 130. At such a high OD, we find that the pump laser intensity profile has a significant effect on the time-frequency entangled two-photon waveform. We also confirm the quantum particle nature of heralded narrow-band single photons generated from this source.
We analyze the quantum-state purity of heralded single photons produced from frequency-anticorrelated biphotons. We find that the quantum-state purity in the time-frequency domain depends strongly on the response time uncertainty of the trigger-photon detector that heralds the generation of its paired photon. If the trigger response time is much shorter than the two-photon coherence time, the time-frequency quantum-state purity of heralded single photons approaches unity and the heralded single photon is in a nearly pure state. If the trigger response time is much longer than the two-photon coherence time, the heralded photon is then projected onto a mixed state. Making use of the time-frequency entanglement, heralded single photons with a well-defined temporal wave function or a frequency superposition state can be produced and engineered. This time-frequency entanglement allows for shaping heralded single photons through nonlocal spectral modulation.
The generation of nonclassical photon pairs with a long coherence time is key for applications that range from fundamental to quantum communication and metrology. Spontaneous four-wave mixing with electromagnetically induced transparency has been demonstrated as one of the most efficient methods; however, narrowing the bandwidth and producing photon pairs with a temporal length beyond 1 μs remains a technical challenge due to noise considerations and the need for cold atoms with a high optical depth (OD). In this work, we demonstrate the generation of narrowband photon pairs with a controllable coherence time up to 1.72 μs in a laser-cooled atomic ensemble with an OD as high as 130. At such a high OD, we find that the pump laser field spatial profile has a significant effect on the time–frequency entangled two-photon waveform. We also confirm the quantum particle nature of heralded narrowband single photons generated from this source.
The interference of single photons from independent sources is an essential tool in quantum information processing. However, the interfering of photons with long temporal states in a time-resolved manner has rarely been studied. This is because without transmitting spectral filters or coupling to a cavity mode single photons generated in traditional nonlinear crystals suffer from a short temporal profile below 1 ns. With spectral correlation maintained in the biphotons generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing process in cold atom clouds, here we demonstrate the temporal interference of two frequency-tunable long photons from two independent cold atomic sources. We observe and analyze the interference of frequency-mismatched photons, where the phenomenon of the quantum beat at megahertz separation is displayed. Our paper provides more details for the quantum beat of two independent narrow-band single photons, which may find potential application in frequency-encoded photonic qubits in quantum information processing.
Biphotons are entangled photon pairs that cannot be described as a product state of two individual photons. In this talk we summarize our recent progress in generating narrowband biphotons from spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in cold atoms with electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Here we are particularly interested in the group delay regime, where the biphoton time-frequency entanglement and joint wave function can be manipulated by controlling the group-delay-induced phase matching condition of the paired photons. The biphoton coherence time, thus its bandwidth of the joint spectrum, is determined by the relative group delay between the paired photons. The longest biphoton coherence time on record is more than 3 µs. We find that for a fixed optical depth, the twophoton waveform is independent of the atomic density distribution. However, the spatial profiles of the two driving laser beams have significant effects on the biphoton temporal wavefunction. We demonstrate a technique of shaping the biphoton temporal wavefunction by directly mapping the spatial profile of the pump laser beam onto the biphoton temporal waveform. This spatial-to-temporal mapping, or series-toparallel conversion, allows for coding the spatial information of the pump spatial profile to the sequential temporal modes of the biphtoon quantum state. Using a computer-controlled spatial light modulator, we produced biphotons with temporal waveforms of Gaussian, exponential, and double-peak shapes. As compared to temporally modulating the driving laser fields that reduces the frequency entanglement, this spatial-to-temporal biphoton shaping does not scarify the time-frequency entanglement and can be used to produce heralded narrowband single photons with controllable waveforms.