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Frontiers in Physics

Full characterization of spontaneous parametric down conversion in non-ideal quarter-wavelength semiconductor Bragg reflection waveguide

Bin Niu, Cheng Qian, Xu Jing, Chenquan Wan, Yuechan Kong, Tangsheng Chen, Yichen Liu, Liangliang Lu

Published Jan 4, 2023• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Entangled photons are important for testing foundations of quantum physics and are at the heart of quantum technology. Integrated photonics has overwhelming dominance in terms of density and performance, making it a promise route for scalable quantum information processing. AlGaAs-based materials having large second-order non-linearities, direct bandgap and strong electro-optical effect can offer distinct advantages in quantum light source. Here we report a non-ideal quarter-wavelength Bragg reflection waveguide for generating three types of spontaneous parametric down-conversion processes. A general solution to the dispersion equation is derived and employed for designing high efficiency devices by taking into account the influence of core layer aluminium concentration. We further design and fabricate a Bragg reflection waveguide sample based on the analysis, and experimentally characterize its phase matching types and spectral brightness. Our work paves the path for the development of portable quantum light sources.

DOI
10.3389/fphy.2022.1099909

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Integrated photonics is playing a key role in the development of quantum technologies covering applications ranging from quantum communication to computing and from simulations to sensing. In this context, material platforms enabling the chip-scale integration of quantum components are a key issue on the way towards real-world and large-scale technological implementations. In this paper, we review our last achievements on AlGaAs Bragg reflection waveguides emitting nonclassical states of light by spontaneous parametric down conversion. The choice of this platform combines the advantages of a mature fabrication technology, room temperature operation, emission in the telecom C-Band and compliance with electrical injection. We demonstrate the ability of these devices to generate a large variety of quantum states spanning from biphoton frequency combs to broadband polarization entanglement enabling promising applications in quantum processing as well as flexible quantum networks.
Bragg-reflection waveguides (BRWs) fabricated from AlGaAs provide an interesting nonlinear optical platform for photon-pair generation via parametric down-conversion (PDC). In contrast to many conventional PDC sources, BRWs are made of high refractive index materials and their characteristics are very sensitive to the underlying layer structure. First, we show that the design parameters like the phase matching wavelength and the group refractive indices of the interacting modes can be reliably controlled even in the presence of fabrication tolerances. We then investigate how these characteristics can be taken advantage of when designing quantum photonic applications with BRWs. We especially concentrate on achieving a small differential group delay between the generated photons of a pair and then explore the performance of our design when realizing a Hong–Ou–Mandel interference experiment or generating spectrally multi-band polarization entangled states. Our results show that the versatility provided by engineering the dispersion in BRWs is important for employing them in different quantum optics tasks.
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