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OSA Advanced Photonics Congress

Generation of photon and plasmon pairs by a nonlinear semiconductor nanoparticle

Nikita A. Olekhno, Mihail I. Petrov, Ivan V. Iorsh

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the present work, we consider the generation of entangled photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion of light by a nanoparticle, as well as the generation of plasmon-polariton pairs with a nanoparticle located near a metal-dielectric interface.
DOI
10.1364/np.2018.npm2i.5

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In the present paper, we theoretically consider the generation of entangled photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion of light by a nonlinear dielectric nanoparticle. This nanoparticle is the only source of nonlinearity in the considered model. We assume that the particle is small compared to the wavelength of light so that the process is non-resonant. An intuitive theoretical description is developed for the case when the nonlinear susceptibility tensor of the material of a nanoparticle has a form of the Levi-Civita symbol. In this case, a two-photon amplitude which characterizes a spatial distribution of entangled photon pairs can be interpreted as a result of interference between two induced dipoles, both being orthogonal to the direction of polarization of the pump photon. A generation of entangled surface plasmon-polaritons by a dielectric nanoparticle located near the metal-dielectric interface is also considered.
In the last few years, materials with strong second-order optical nonlinearity such as gallium arsenide, barium titanate and transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted significant attention, because they for the first time allowed efficient nonlinear optical interactions on the sub-micron scales. One of such nonlinear optical interactions - spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) - allows the generation of pairs of correlated photons and can enable photon entanglement. This is the foundation of many quantum optical applications ranging from secure communication to ultrafast quantum computing. The key challenges in this field are efficiency and the generation of on-demand quantum states.
Energy-time entangled photon pairs (EPPs), which are at the heart of numerous quantum light applications, are commonly generated in nonlinear crystals. Some highly sensitive quantum applications require the use of ultra-broadband entangled photons that cannot be generated in nonlinear crystals due to phase-matching requirements. Here, we investigate the possibility of using metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) as a means for generating entangled photons through spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). MNPs are known for their strong light-matter coupling at their localized surface plasmon resonance, and since the propagation length through them is negligible relative to optical wavelengths, we consider them as excellent candidates to serve as non-phase matched sources of ultra-broadband entangled photons. To that end, we report experimental results of classical-light second-harmonic generation in silver nanotriangles and nanocubes embedded in polyvinyl alcohol. Based on the results of our experiments, performed using the reference-free hyper-Rayleigh scattering method [A. Ashkenazy et al., J. Phys. B 145401, 2019], we present an estimation of the characteristics of SPDC in MNPs. We show that, despite of the metals' centrosymmetric structure, MNPs exhibit second order nonlinearity that is mainly of an electric dipole nature, and so they are suitable for SPDC. Moreover, we show that localized surface-plasmon resonance can play a significant role in enhancing the generated EPPs flux. Finally, we compare the SPDC capabilities of MNPs to that of commonly used nonlinear crystals and show that the expected EPPs flux from MNPs is weaker but the EPPs have very large bandwidth, which could be helpful for advanced quantum sensing, spectroscopy and communication applications.
Nonlinear metal-dielectric layered structures are shown to be able to efficiently generate entangled photon pairs using spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Increase of electric-field amplitudes in these structures enhanced by the presence of metal layers is sufficient to compensate for losses inside thin metal layers. As an example, photon pairs emitted from a structure composed of alternating nonlinear dielectric GaN layers and metal Ag layers are analyzed in spectral, temporal, as well as spatial domains. Also, correlations and entanglement between two photons in a pair are determined. Very narrow photon-pair spectra together with strong directionality of photon-pair emission are observed making the photons suitable for photon-atom interactions. Highly enhanced electric-field amplitudes provide high photon-pair generation efficiencies.