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Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology II

Imaging in time of non-classical ultrafast signals with high temporal resolution

Avi Klein, Inbar Sibony, Sara Meir, Ori Friedman, Shir Shahal, Hamootal Duadi, Eliahu Cohen, Moti Fridman

Published Feb 25, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A time-lens can image signals in time and map ultrafast signals from frequency to time. The concept of time-lens is based on the duality between the diffraction of light in space and the dispersion of pulses in time, which arises from the similarity between the equations describing these two phenomena. In this paper we explain how to use time-lenses in order to perform high-resolution temporal imaging on non-classical ultrafast signals. Such a scheme can be used e.g. for diagnosing quantum cryptography schemes on optical fiber networks or assessing the performance of photonic quantum computers and simulators.

DOI
10.1117/12.2543957

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Temporal optics, and specifically time-lenses and time-stretch systems, revolutionized the field of ultrafast measurements. Over the last years, we utilized time-lenses to measure different quantum schemes and studied the temporal modes of correlated photons with high temporal resolution. We developed temporal schemes based on quantum light, for realizing quantum tomography in the time-domain. We developed low-resolution time-lenses for weak quantum measurements. Finally, we suggest how quantum time-lens can lead to optical deep learning systems. In the talk, I will give an overview of the different types of quantum temporal schemes, elaborate on the future challenges in the field, and discuss the prospects and future applications which may be possible.
Temporal imaging is a technique that enables manipulation of temporal optical signals in a manner similar to manipulation of optical images in spatial domain. It uses the notion of space-time duality with dispersion phenomena playing the role of diffraction and quadratic phase modulation in time acting as a time lens. In this work we address the problem of temporal imaging of a temporally broadband squeezed light generated by a traveling-wave optical parametric amplifier or a similar device. We consider a single-lens temporal imaging system formed by two dispersive elements and a parametric temporal lens, based on a sum-frequency generation process. We derive a unitary transformation of the field operators performed by this kind of time lens. We evaluate the squeezing spectrum at the output of the single-lens imaging system and find the conditions preserving squeezing in the output field. When the efficiency factor of the temporal lens is smaller than unity, the vacuum fluctuations deteriorate squeezing at its output. For efficiency close to unity, when certain imaging conditions are satisfied, the squeezing spectrum at the output of the imaging system will be the same as that at the output of the OPA. This scheme gives the possibility of matching the coherence time of the broadband squeezed light to the response time of the photodetector. We finally discuss a temporal imaging scheme which allows to partially compensating the frequency dispersion of the OPA.
Time-lenses can image ultrafast signals in time. Placing them in a 2-f configuration leads to Fourier transform of the input signal and ultrafast spectroscopy. We utilized two time-lenses in a 4-f configuration and formed an interferometer in the time domain. Our time lenses are based on four-wave mixing process, generating an idler beam which serves as the output. The output from the first time-lens is the input to the second time-lens. At the output of the second time-lens, we get an interference between the signal beams of both time-lenses and the idler beams of both time-lenses. This interference is sensitive to ultrafast phase shifts in time and can lead to interfere signals in different times. This interferometer is good for quantum imaging, and studying the temporal structure of entangled photons. In this talk we will demonstrate the interferometer, how we exploit time-lenses for interferometry, the application of the interferometer, and our experimental results.
Temporal imaging is a technique that enables manipulation of temporal optical signals in a manner similar to manipulation of optical images in spatial domain. The main building block of temporal imaging, the time lens, is based on nonlinear optical processes such as the sum- frequency generation or the four-wave mixing. While classical temporal imaging is nowadays a well-established domain, its quantum counterpart is still in its nascent period. In this talk we shall give and overview of the quantum temporal imaging and its application for manipulation of non-classical states of the light.
Techniques to control the spectro-temporal properties of quantum states of light at ultrafast time scales are crucial for numerous applications in quantum information science. In this work, we report an all-optical time lens for quantum signals based on Bragg-scattering four-wave mixing with picosecond resolution. Our system achieves a temporal magnification factor of 158 with single-photon level inputs, which is sufficient to overcome the intrinsic timing jitter of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. We demonstrate discrimination of two terahertz-bandwidth, single-photon-level pulses with 2.1 ps resolution (electronic jitter corrected resolution of 1.25 ps). We draw on elegant tools from Fourier optics to further show that the time-lens framework can be extended to perform complex unitary spectro-temporal transformations by imparting optimized temporal and spectral phase profiles to the input waveforms. Using numerical optimization techniques, we show that a four-stage transformation can realize an efficient temporal mode sorter that demultiplexes 10 Hermite–Gaussian (HG) modes. Our time-lens-based framework represents a new toolkit for arbitrary spectro-temporal processing of single photons, with applications in temporal mode quantum processing, high-dimensional quantum key distribution, temporal mode matching for quantum networks, and quantum-enhanced sensing with time-frequency entangled states.