We present a proposal for photon-pair generation through intermodal four-wave mixing with high-dimensional entanglement in transverse mode. Based on this, we suggest a simple fiber design capable of generating four-dimensional Bell states.
Silicon photonics is rapidly emerging as a promising, scalable platform for quantum information applications. As the technology matures, sources of high-quality quantum-optical states are increasingly important. We discuss the use of intermodal four-wave mixing in silicon waveguides for creating entangled photon pairs. We describe a framework to numerically analyze the state of produced photon pairs and discuss a scheme for generating photon pairs that are purely entangled in their transverse waveguide mode. Using this scheme, we find a theoretical fidelity of 99.6 % to a true Bell state in the transverse mode with no spectral correlations.
Four-wave mixing in optical fibers has been proven to have many applications within processing of classical optical signals. In addition, recent developments in multimode fibers have made it possible to achieve the necessary phase-matching for efficient four-wave mixing over a very wide bandwidth. Thus, the combination of multimode fiber optics and four-wave mixing is very attractive for various applications. This is especially the case for applications in quantum communication, for example in photon-pair generation. This is the subject of this work, where we discuss the impact of fluctuations in core radius on the quality of the heralded single-photon states and demonstrate experimental results of intermodal spontaneous four-wave mixing for photon-pair generation.