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Optics Express

Highly customized 1010 nm, ns-pulsed Yb-doped fiber amplifier as a key tool for on-demand single-photon generation

Oliver de Vries, Marco Plötner, Florian Christaller, Hao Zhang, Annika Belz, Benjamin Heinrich, Harald Kübler, Robert Löw, Tilman Pfau, Till Walbaum, Thomas Schreiber, Andreas Tünnermann

Published May 15, 2020• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The development of highly customized technical devices is a decisive feature of technically complex setups, as frequently observed in quantum experiments. This paper describes the development and realization of an Yb-doped all-fiber amplifier system designed for such a special application, more specifically, an on-demand single-photon source based on four-wave mixing with rubidium Rydberg atoms. The laser is capable of generating bandwidth-limited configurable nanosecond pulses up to peak powers of >100 W and with pulse repetition frequencies (PRF) between 50 Hz and 1 MHz at selectable wavelengths (1008-1024 nm). Especially the amplification of the 1010 nm reference seed at the lower edge of the amplification range for Yb-based fibers is challenging and tends to produce amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) at higher wavelengths. To achieve high ASE suppression, particularly at low pulse repetition frequencies, two acousto-optical modulators (AOM) are utilized both for pulse picking and for temporal filtering. The synchronization between pulse repetition frequency and AOM driver signal allows pulse amplitude fluctuations to be kept below 1%, while ASE is suppressed by at least 85 dB (PRF = 1 MHz) and 65 dB (PRF = 1 kHz).

DOI
10.1364/oe.394519

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The development of highly customized technical devices is a decisive feature of technically complex setups, as frequently observed in quantum experiments. This paper describes the development and realization of an Yb-doped all-fiber amplifier system designed for such a special application, more specifically, an on-demand single-photon source based on four-wave mixing with rubidium Rydberg atoms. The laser is capable of generating bandwidth-limited configurable nanosecond pulses up to peak powers of >100 W and with pulse repetition frequencies (PRF) between 50 Hz and 1 MHz at selectable wavelengths (1008-1024 nm). Especially the amplification of the 1010 nm reference seed at the lower edge of the amplification range for Yb-based fibers is challenging and tends to produce amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) at higher wavelengths. To achieve high ASE suppression, particularly at low pulse repetition frequencies, two acousto-optical modulators (AOM) are utilized both for pulse picking and for temporal filtering. The synchronization between pulse repetition frequency and AOM driver signal allows pulse amplitude fluctuations to be kept below 1%, while ASE is suppressed by at least 85 dB (PRF = 1 MHz) and 65 dB (PRF = 1 kHz).
We describe a fiber Raman amplifier for nanosecond and sub-nanosecond pulses centered around 1260 nm. The amplification takes place inside a 4.5-m-long polarization-maintaining phosphorus-doped fiber, pumped at 1080 nm by 3-ns-long pulses with a repetition rate of 200 kHz and up to 1.75 kW peak power. The input seed pulses are of sub-mW peak-power and minimal duration of 0.25 ns, carved out of a continuous-wave laser with sub-MHz linewidth. We obtain linearly polarized output pulses with peak powers of up to 1.4 kW, corresponding to peak-power conversion efficiency of over 80%. An ultrahigh small signal gain of 90 dB is achieved, and the signal-to-noise ratio 3 dB below the saturation power is above 20 dB. No significant temporal and spectral broadening is observed for output pulses up to 400 W peak power, and broadening at higher powers can be reduced by phase modulation of the seed pulse. Thus, nearly-transform-limited pulses with peak power up to 1 kW are obtained. Finally, we demonstrate the generation of pulses with controllable frequency chirp, pulses with variable width, and double pulses. This amplifier is thus suitable for coherent control of narrow atomic resonances, especially for the fast and coherent excitation of rubidium atoms to Rydberg states. These abilities open the way towards several important applications in quantum non-linear optics.
Single photon source is a non-classical light field with anti-bunching effect, which has a potential applications in the research of fundamental physics problems, quantum precision measurement, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. The strong interaction between highly excited Rydberg atoms presents an excitation blockade effect. In a dense Rydberg atomic ensemble, the excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume is suppressed, where the interactions of Rydberg atoms shift the atomic states out of resonance with an excitation laser. We consider here the generation of single photon source by using a four-wave mixing scheme in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. In a homemade micrometer-sized atomic vapor cell, one-dimensional size is smaller than the radius of Rydberg blockade and the other two-dimensional size is limited by the size of focused laser beam. The blockade radius is on the order of a few micrometers, depending on the Rydberg atom states. An excitation blockade effect can be used to realize single photon source in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The micron cesium-cell is used to spatially localize atomic groups, which results in the atomic decoherence time on the order of microseconds or even nanoseconds. This requires a high-power pulsed laser to prepare the Rydberg atomic state at a nanosecond scale. Four-photon excitation schemes with narrow linewidth lasers are also used experimentally. The cesium-Rydberg state can usually be excited by the lasers with optical wavelengths 852 and 509 nm, respectively. The laser system is well-stabilized so that the detuning is small compared with the spontaneous linewidth of Rydberg state, while the laser power and temporal mode need to be specified for ns-time coherence in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The 852 nm laser can be achieved by modulating the continuous laser beam with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM). While this remains a technical challenge for 509 nm laser with ns-laser pulse. There is no EOIM to generate the ns-laser pulse with high power. We demonstrate a novel generation method of 509 nm laser system. In our experiments, a 1018 nm fiber laser is used to produce a continuous laser with a typical linewidth of ～8 kHz and power of 10 mW. The nanosecond pulse is generated with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM) by modifying the continuous laser beam. The peak power of modulated optical pulse is amplified to 4600 W by using a homemade fiber amplifier. The output beam of 1018 nm is then injected into a periodically poled lithium-niobate (PPLN) to generate the second harmonics laser of 509 nm. The typical peak power of 509 nm reaches 173 W by optimizing PPLN phase matching parameters. The pulse repetition frequency of the 509 nm laser can be continuously tuned in a range of 300 kHz–100 MHz, and the pulse width can be continuously tuned in a range of 1–100 ns. Peak power fluctuation of the pulses is about 1.3%. The power 509 nm laser with optimized pulse parameters can be used to excite the cesium atom with GHz bandwidth. Meanwhile the two seed source lasers is well established experimentally, which allows alternating pulses with a different wavelength. This is an essential capability for realizing a single photon source through four-wave mixing.
We present a novel design of a compact, stable, and easy-adjustable semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) system.This SOA system is capable of providing up to 560-mW laser power at the wavelength of 852 nm.For the continuous-wave (CW) seeding laser, the amplification gain can reach 18 dB.We add amplitude modulation onto the CW laser and measure the modulation amplification between seeding and output laser.The amplification gain remains constant within the frequency range from 10 Hz to 1 MHz.The whole system could work in ultra-stable condition: for CW seeding laser, the fluctuation of output power is less than 0.33% in several hours.
We report the optical architecture, experimental performance, and simulated performance of polarization- maintaining CW and pulsed single clad Tm-doped fiber amplifiers designed to operate over a wavelength span of 1760—1960 nm. We highlight the potential applications of these amplifiers to quantum computing and quantum qubit experiments using 1762 nm light. Our amplifier exhibits 3 W CW output power and 20 W peak pulsed output power (2 MHz rep. rate, 10% duty cycle) at 1762 nm. Measurements of the wavelength response of the TDFA yield an experimental operating bandwidth extending from < 1750 nm to > 1920 nm. Simulations of the amplifier bandwidth indicate a 3 dB (50% FWHM) wavelength span of 1745 nm to 1980 nm (135 nm). Experimental output power and bandwidth results agree well with the simulations. The external noise figure for this amplifier ranges from 7.5 dB to 9.5 dB. No linewidth broadening was observed in a typical TDFA output when using a single frequency input laser source with a linewidth of 10 kHz. We discuss suitability and applications of the TDFA to 1762 nm enabled manipulation of optical qubits in trapped 133Ba+ ions.
We report a novel optical pulse generation method for high-speed wavelength switching of amplified nanosecond (ns) laser pulses resonant to atomic transitions. Under free-running conditions, a slave laser diode is blue-detuned with tens of GHz relative to the master laser. A nanosecond pulse chain generated by modulating the continuous-wave master laser with a fiber-pigtailed electro-optical intensity modulator is injected into the slave laser diode to fast switch the slave laser’s wavelength back and forth. The output beam of the slave laser is filtered by a temperature-controlled etalon to get the amplified pulse chain. Based on our dynamic injection locking scheme, we produce an ns-scale square pulse chain with an effective ON/OFF ratio ∼108, considering at least the 60 dB scattering suppression by tuning the light-atom interactions with far off-resonance detuning and the 26.7 dB suppression ratio of the etalon. By studying the dynamic processes of injection locking, we determine the dependence of injection locking on both the injection power and the frequency detuning.