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Optics Express

Indistinguishable single-mode photons from spectrally engineered biphotons

Changchen Chen, Jane E. Heyes, Kyung-Han Hong, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Adriana E. Lita, Thomas Gerrits, Sae Woo Nam, Jeffrey H. Shapiro, Franco N. C. Wong

Published Apr 10, 2019• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

, with a Gaussian phase-matching function and a transform-limited Gaussian pump, to achieve near-unity spectral purity in heralded single photons at telecommunication wavelength. Theory shows that these phase-matching and pump conditions are sufficient to ensure that a biphoton state with a circularly symmetric joint spectral intensity profile is transform limited and factorable. We verify the heralded-state spectral purity in a four-fold coincidence measurement by performing Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between two independently generated heralded photons. With a mild spectral filter we obtain an interference visibility of 98.4±1.1% which corresponds to a heralded-state purity of 99.2%. Our heralded photon source is potentially an essential resource for measurement-based quantum information processing and quantum network applications.

DOI
10.1364/oe.27.011626

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, with a Gaussian phase-matching function and a transform-limited Gaussian pump, to achieve near-unity spectral purity in heralded single photons at telecommunication wavelength. Theory shows that these phase-matching and pump conditions are sufficient to ensure that a biphoton state with a circularly symmetric joint spectral intensity profile is transform limited and factorable. We verify the heralded-state spectral purity in a four-fold coincidence measurement by performing Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between two independently generated heralded photons. With a mild spectral filter we obtain an interference visibility of 98.4±1.1% which corresponds to a heralded-state purity of 99.2%. Our heralded photon source is potentially an essential resource for measurement-based quantum information processing and quantum network applications.
We present an experimental demonstration of heralded single photons prepared in pure quantum states from a parametric down-conversion source. It is shown that, through controlling the modal structure of the photon pair emission, one can generate pairs in factorable states and thence eliminate the need for spectral filters in multiple-source interference schemes. Indistinguishable heralded photons were generated in two independent spectrally engineered sources and Hong-Ou-Mandel interference observed between them without spectral filters. The measured visibility of 94.4% sets a minimum bound on the mean photon purity.
Spectrally intrinsically uncorrelated biphoton states generated from nonlinear crystals are very important but rare resources for quantum photonics and quantum information applications. Previously, such biphoton states were generated from several kinds of crystals, however, their wavelength ranges and nonlinear efficiencies were still limited for various applications. In order to explore new crystal for wider wavelength range and higher nonlinear efficiency, here we theoretically study the generation of spectrally uncorrelated biphoton states from 14 crystals in the “BBO family,” including BBO, CLBO, KABO, KBBF, RBBF, CBBF, BABF, BiBO, LBO, CBO, LRB4, LCB, YCOB, and GdCOB. They satisfy three kinds of group-velocity matching condition from near-infrared to telecom wavelengths. Furthermore, heralded single photons can be generated with a purity as high as 0.98, which is achieved without any narrow filtering. The indistinguishability of photons from independent sources is examined by the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, which results in a visibility of 98% also without any further filtering, that is, photons from different heralded single-photon sources are highly indistinguishable. Our study may provide single-photon sources with good performance for quantum information processing at near-infrared and telecom wavelengths.
Single photons are at the heart of optical quantum technologies such as quantum cryptography, quantum computing and quantum metrology. In this paper we report on the creation of photon pairs via four-wave-mixing (FWM) in birefringent photonic crystal fibres (PCF). It has recently been suggested that for thoroughly engineering the phase matching condition of a birefringent PCF, photon pairs can by created in an intrinsically pure state and narrow band. This can be achieved for cross-polarized phase matching, where two pump photons in the slow axis are converted into a pair of photons, polarized in the orthogonal fast axis. The aim is to produce such intrinsically pure and narrow-band photons and hence to achieve high non-classical interference visibility without any requirement for spectral filtering. In order to experimentally test the purity of our heralded single photons we performed a Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment using heralded signal photons generated in separate PCF sources.
Photonic quantum technologies rely on the efficient generation and interference of indistinguishable photons. Exceptional achievements in this respect have been obtained by domain engineering of quasi-phase-matched parametric downconversion sources, demonstrating high two-photon interference visibility using only moderate bandpass spectral filtering. Here, we optimized the spectral purity and indistinguishability of photons from telecom-wavelength sources by combining Gaussian quasi-phase matching with Gaussian pump spectral shaping. Without spectral filtering, we used time-of-flight spectrometry to estimate an upper bound spectral purity of 99.9272(6)%, and achieved visibilities of up to 98.5(8)% in two-photon interference experiments with independent sources.
We implement an ultrafast pulsed type-II parametric down conversion source in a periodically poled KTP waveguide at telecommunication wavelengths with almost identical properties between signal and idler. As such, our source resembles closely a pure, genuine single mode photon pair source with indistinguishable modes. We measure the joint spectral intensity distribution and second order correlation functions of the marginal beams and find with both methods very low effective mode numbers corresponding to a Schmidt number below 1.16. We further demonstrate the indistinguishability as well as the purity of signal and idler photons by Hong-Ou-Mandel interferences between signal and idler and between signal/idler and a coherent field, respectively. Without using narrowband spectral filtering, we achieve a visibility for the interference between signal and idler of 94.8% and determine a purity of more than 80% for the heralded single photon states. Moreover, we measure raw heralding efficiencies of 20.5% and 15.5% for the signal and idler beams corresponding to detector-loss corrected values of 80% and 70%.