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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Effect of partially coherent pump on the spatial and spectral profiles of down-converted photons

Bhaskar Kanseri, Preeti Sharma

Published Dec 24, 2019• 17 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report a theoretical study of spatial and spectral profiles of twin photons generated with a pump beam having a partially spatially coherent nature. These profiles are simulated for both type-I and type-II spontaneous parametric down conversion in collinear and non-collinear configurations and found to be highly dependent on the choice of beam waist and transverse correlation length of the pump beam. It is found that by suitable selection of coherence length and size of the pump beam, the asymmetry in spatial geometry of down-converted photons and the spectral width can be modified. Owing to the partially spatially coherent nature, these biphoton beams might offer more robustness against losses compared to their fully coherent counterparts, and thus could yield a high success rate in free-space quantum communication and in quantum key distribution.

DOI
10.1364/josab.376565

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We report a theoretical study of spatial and spectral profiles of twin photons generated with a pump beam having a partially spatially coherent nature. These profiles are simulated for both type-I and type-II spontaneous parametric down conversion in collinear and non-collinear configurations and found to be highly dependent on the choice of beam waist and transverse correlation length of the pump beam. It is found that by suitable selection of coherence length and size of the pump beam, the asymmetry in spatial geometry of down-converted photons and the spectral width can be modified. Owing to the partially spatially coherent nature, these biphoton beams might offer more robustness against losses compared to their fully coherent counterparts, and thus could yield a high success rate in free-space quantum communication and in quantum key distribution.
Abstract Partially spatially coherent qubits are more immune to turbulent atmospheric conditions than coherent qubits, which makes them excellent candidates for free-space quantum communication. In this article, we report the generation of partially spatially coherent qubits in a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process using a Gaussian Schell model (GSM) pump beam. For this non-linear process, we demonstrate experimentally for the first time, the transfer of spatial coherence features of the pump (classical) to the biphotons (quantum) field. Also, the spatial profiles of partially coherent qubits generated in type-I and type-II non-collinear SPDC process are experimentally observed and multi-mode nature of partially coherent photons (qubit) is ascertained. These investigations pave the way toward the efficient generation of partially spatially coherent qubits with a tunable degree of spatial coherence, which lead to wide range of applications in frontier areas such as quantum cryptography, teleportation, imaging, and lithography.
We theoretically study the polarization entanglement and the non-local correlations manifested by biphotons using measures as concurrence and CHSH Bell test, generated in the spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process for partially spatially coherent pump, affected by the spatial walk-off effects of the extraordinary beam. The study has been carried out for a well-known scheme for generating polarization entanglement utilizing non-collinear, frequency degenerate SPDC process in paired type-I uniaxial crystals. It is found that the polarization entanglement changes drastically with variation in spatial coherence of the pump, offering a possibility to realize a tunable source of polarization entanglement. The study reveals the overriding role of aperture size in compensation of the effect of spatial coherence of pump on the polarization entanglement and non-local correlations, especially in the conservation of polarization entanglement for incoherent and partially coherent pump beams. Free-space quantum secure communication utilizing these quantum states possessing maximal entanglement and partially spatially coherent properties would essentially offer robustness to the losses on propagation through atmospheric turbulence, resulting in a significant enhancement in the key rate.
Partially coherent quantum-entangled beams combine quantum correlation with partial coherence, allowing them to maintain quantum characteristics while being more resistant to distortions caused by random media during propagation. In this study, we investigate the effect of coherence variation of such beams on non-local double-slit quantum interference. The spatial coherence variation is achieved by controlling the transverse coherence length of the Gaussian Schell model pump in the spontaneous parametric down conversion process. For a fixed beam size, the momentum correlation width of partially coherent biphotons increases with the decrease in the transverse coherence length. This results in a biphoton beam exhibiting multiple spatial modes, making it more suitable for studying the non-local features of quantum states in imaging, interference, and diffraction experiments. Our findings infer both high-quality and near-unity visibility of nonlocal interference using the partially coherent twin beams, even with the substantial decrease in the coherence of the pump. We believe these results can enhance robustness against the deleterious effects of the medium during propagation and can have potential applications in optical image cryptography, biomedical imaging, quantum lithography, and quantum holography.
We put forward an approach for manipulating the spectral profile of entangled photon pairs. Such spectral properties are mediated by the geometry of noncollinear spontaneous parametric down-conversion and by selecting the appropriate spatial profile of the pump laser radiation. We show that one can translate spatial features imprinted in the pump beam into desired spectral profiles of the generated entangled-photon state. Particular configurations suitable for generating entangled pairs with ultranarrow spectral width and with multiple-peaked spectra are demonstrated.
We demonstrate experimental generation of spatially entangled photon pairs by spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) using a partial spatially coherent pump beam. By varying the spatial coherence of the pump, we show its influence on the down-converted photon's spatial correlations and on its degree of entanglement, in excellent agreement with theory. We then exploit this property to produce pairs of photons with a specific degree of entanglement by tailoring of the pump coherence length. This work thus unravels the fundamental transfer of coherence occurring in SPDC processes, and provides a simple experimental scheme to generate photon pairs with a well-defined degree of spatial entanglement, which may be useful for quantum communication and information processing.
We present a theoretical and experimental characterization of the joint spatial distribution of paired photons generated via non-collinear type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Specifically, for the photons created parallel and perpendicular to the optical table, we determine the shape of such distributions and the degree of correlation of these photons. The characterization is done for different sizes of the pump beam waist. We found that it is possible to have different spatial distributions of the photons with the same degree of correlation.