A tunnel diode parametric down converter

Gabriel Moagăr‐Poladian

The basic behavior of a tunnel diode when it is used as an optoelectronic device is presented. It is shown that a tunnel diode can be used as an electro-optic modulator, as a device that exhibits self-induced transparency, or as a wavelength converter (for both upconversion and downconversion). The tunnel diode has optical bistability even if it is not placed inside a Fabry-Perot resonator. Numerical estimations are made for some of the parameters of interest for an optoelectronic device and are compared with those of other existing semiconductor-based optoelectronic devices. As the numerical estimates show, a tunnel diode can be a highly efficient optoelectronic device with an extremely wide area of application.

Karl-Heinz Löcherer

M. Malnou, Benton Miller, J. A. Estrada +5 more

Kazuhiro Hayasaka, Yun Zhang, Katsuyuki Kasai

Quantum-correlated twin beams were successfully generated from an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) pumped by a frequency-doubled diode laser. The 50-mW diode laser output at 1080 nm was first converted to 22.5-mW green light, and then was used to pump an OPO to yield signal and idler beams with a total power of 5 mW. Noise reduction of 4.3 dB below the shot-noise level was observed in the intensity-difference spectrum. The setup opens a simple way to a compact and low-cost source of diverse nonclassical states of light.

Bernhard W. Adams

Luke Horowitz

An apparatus for detecting pairs of entangled 405nm photons that have undergone Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion through β-Barium Borate is described. By using avalanche photo-diodes to detect the low-intensity converted beam and a coincidence module to register coincident photons, it is possible to create an apparatus than can be used to perform quantum information experiments under a budget appropriate for an undergraduate physics lab.