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Physical Review A

Spectral domain nonlinear quantum interferometry with pulsed laser excitation

Jasleen Kaur, Yu Mukai, Ryo Okamoto, Shigeki Takeuchi

Published Dec 22, 2023• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Nonlinear quantum interferometry is widely used in photonic quantum sensing applications to perform measurements with undetected photons. While continuous wave (cw) lasers are typically used to generate correlated photon pairs, pulsed laser pumping can enhance the generation efficiency for photon pairs and enable time-resolved measurements. However, the finite spectral linewidth of pulsed lasers leads to imperfect frequency correlation between generated photon pairs, which can affect the sensitivity of nonlinear interferometry. In this work, we investigate the effect of the finite linewidth of a pump laser on the visibility of spectral domain interference in a nonlinear quantum interferometer where signal photons are detected using a dispersive spectrometer. The proposed theory quantitatively predicts the visibility as a function of optical path difference for a pump source with arbitrary spectrum. As a demonstration, we construct an experimental setup to obtain quantum interference using both cw and pulsed laser excitations under the same experimental conditions. At large optical path differences, a fine interference fringe pattern with high contrast is observed with cw laser excitation, whereas with pulsed laser pumping, the visibility decreases as the optical path delay increases, and the interference fringes appear almost washed out. Our quantitative analysis is useful for determining appropriate pulsed laser parameters for designing nonlinear interferometers for quantum sensing applications using a dispersive spectrometer.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.063714

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Nonlinear quantum interferometry is widely used in photonic quantum sensing applications to perform measurements with undetected photons. While continuous wave (cw) lasers are typically used to generate correlated photon pairs, pulsed laser pumping can enhance the generation efficiency for photon pairs and enable time-resolved measurements. However, the finite spectral linewidth of pulsed lasers leads to imperfect frequency correlation between generated photon pairs, which can affect the sensitivity of nonlinear interferometry. In this work, we investigate the effect of the finite linewidth of a pump laser on the visibility of spectral domain interference in a nonlinear quantum interferometer where signal photons are detected using a dispersive spectrometer. The proposed theory quantitatively predicts the visibility as a function of optical path difference for a pump source with arbitrary spectrum. As a demonstration, we construct an experimental setup to obtain quantum interference using both cw and pulsed laser excitations under the same experimental conditions. At large optical path differences, a fine interference fringe pattern with high contrast is observed with cw laser excitation, whereas with pulsed laser pumping, the visibility decreases as the optical path delay increases, and the interference fringes appear almost washed out. Our quantitative analysis is useful for determining appropriate pulsed laser parameters for designing nonlinear interferometers for quantum sensing applications using a dispersive spectrometer.
In recent years, nonlinear quantum interferometry has been widely explored for applications like spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and imaging [1]. Quantum infrared spectroscopy (QIRS) uses quantum interference of generation processes of frequency-entangled visible-IR photon pairs to perform infrared spectroscopy using visible light sources and silicon-based detectors [2]. This technique utilizes a nonlinear quantum interferometer configuration where the generated IR photons pass through the sample, and the correlated visible photons are detected. The change in the detected visible photon flux with and without the sample helps extract the complex transmittance of the sample in the IR region.
Quantum infrared spectroscopy (QIRS), which uses quantum interference of the generation processes of photon pairs, enables infrared spectroscopy using visible light sources and detectors. Until recently, continuous wave (cw) lasers with a narrow linewidth have been used for excitation in most QIRS experiments. Although the use of pulsed laser pumping is attractive, it has been expected that the inherent finite linewidth of pulsed lasers may degrade the spectral resolution of QIRS. Here, we show that this is not always true. The theoretical analysis shows that the resolution of quantum Fourier transform infrared (QFTIR) spectroscopy is not affected by the linewidth of the pump laser. To verify this, we construct an experimental setup for QFTIR spectroscopy using both cw and pulsed laser excitation under the same experimental conditions. High-resolution spectra are successfully obtained for a silicon parallel plate and an acetylene gas cell as samples using a pulsed pump laser with a finite linewidth, and no resolution degradation is observed compared to the case of cw pumping. These results will open up the use of QFTIR spectroscopy using visible light sources and detectors in novel applications including high-speed time-resolved infrared spectroscopy, which will be beneficial for various fields including physics, chemistry, and environmental science.
Two four-wave mixing processes have been employed to experimentally construct a nonlinear interferometer [Jing et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 011110 (2011)], which has a better phase sensitivity than the traditional linear interferometer. For its applications in quantum measurement, interference fringe visibility can significantly affect the quantum detection efficiency. In this letter, we study how various parameters, such as the pump power, the one-photon detuning, and the two-photon detuning, influence the visibility of nonlinear interferometer. We find that the visibility greater than 0.9 can be achieved for large range of system parameters.
In classical optics, interference occurs between two optical fields when they are indistinguishable from one another. The same holds true in quantum optics, where a particular experiment, the Franson interferometer, involves the interference of a photon pair with a time-delayed version of itself. The canonical version of this interferometer requires that the time delay be much shorter than the coherence length of the pump used to generate the photon pair, so as to guarantee indistinguishability. However, when this time delay is comparable to the coherence length, conventional wisdom suggests that interference visibility degrades significantly. In this work, though, we show that the interference visibility can be restored through judicious temporal post-selection. Utilizing correlated photon pairs generated by a pump whose pulsewidth (460 ps) is shorter than the interferometer’s time delay (500 ps), we are able to observe a fringe visibility of 97.4±4.3%. We believe this new method can be used for the encoding of high-dimensional quantum information in the temporal domain.
Spectral correlation of photon pairs generated in dispersion shifted fiber by a pulsed pump is theoretically analyzed and experimentally investigated. We first calculate the spectral function of photon pairs according to the deduced two-photon state generated by spontaneous four wave mixing under the assumptions close to the real experimental conditions. We then experimentally study the spectral property of the signal and idler photon pairs generated in optical fiber by photon correlation measurements, and the experimental results agree with the calculation. The investigation is useful for developing fiber-based sources of entangled photon pairs and for studying multi-photon quantum interference with multiple photon pairs.
Optical-coherence tomography (OCT) is a technique that employs light in order to measure the internal structure of semitransparent, e.g. biological, samples. It is based on the interference pattern of low-coherence light. Quantum-OCT (QOCT), instead, employs the correlation properties of entangled photon pairs, for example, generated by the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). The usual QOCT scheme uses photon pairs characterised by a joint-spectral amplitude with strict spectral anti-correlations. It has been shown that, in contrast with its classical counterpart, QOCT provides resolution enhancement and dispersion cancellation. In this paper, we revisit the theory of QOCT and extend the theoretical model so as to include photon pairs with arbitrary spectral correlations. We present experimental results that complement the theory and explain the physical underpinnings appearing in the interference pattern. In our experiment, we utilize a pump for the SPDC process ranging from continuous wave to pulsed in the femtosecond regime, and show that cross-correlation interference effects appearing for each pair of layers may be directly suppressed for a sufficiently large pump bandwidth. Our results provide insights and strategies that could guide practical implementations of QOCT.