We review our recent progress in generating and manipulating narrowband (∼ MHz) entangled pahoton pairs from spontaneous four-wave mixing in atomic ensembles. These photons are ideal for interacting with atomic nodes in a photon-atom quantum network.
We demonstrate an efficient experimental scheme for producing polarization-entangled photon pairs from spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in a laser-cooled (85)Rb atomic ensemble, with a bandwidth (as low as 0.8 MHz) much narrower than the rubidium atomic natural linewidth. By stabilizing the relative phase between the two SFWM paths in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration, we are able to produce all four Bell states. These subnatural-linewidth photon pairs with polarization entanglement are ideal quantum information carriers for connecting remote atomic quantum nodes via efficient light-matter interaction in a photon-atom quantum network.
In this article, we review on narrowband photon pairs produced in nonlinear crystals, and especially in atomic ensembles. In atomic ensembles, “write-read” process in pulse mode and spontaneous four-wave mixing process (SFWM) in continuous mode are two popular photon pair generation schemes. We specifically discuss the experimental works with continuous SFWM scheme in cold atomic ensembles. Photon pairs produced in these systems are characteristic of controllable long coherence time, and therefore are accessible with direct temporal modulation. We elaborate on the recent techniques on modulation and waveform reshaping of narrow-band paired photons.