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High-Efficiency Nanophotonic Entangled Pair Production at Visible and Near-IR Wavelengths

Nathan A. Harper, Emily Hwang, Ryoto Sekine, Luis M. Ledezma, Christian Perez, Alireza Marandi, Scott K. Cushing

Published Jan 1, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate nanophotonic visible and near-IR entangled photon pair production via periodically poled thin-film lithium niobate waveguides. Pairs spanning 720-900 nm are generated from 405-406.4 nm pump wavelengths with per-photon efficiencies approaching 10 − 4.
DOI
10.1364/cleo_fs.2024.ff2k.3

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A thin-film periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide was designed and fabricated which generates entangled photon pairs at telecommunications wavelengths with high coincidences-to-accidentals counts ratio CAR>67000, two-photon interference visibility V>99%, and heralded single-photon autocorrelation g_{H}^{(2)}(0)<0.025. Nondestructive in situ diagnostics were used to determine the poling quality in 3D. Megahertz rates of photon pairs were generated by less than a milliwatt of pump power, simplifying the pump requirements and dissipation compared to traditional spontaneous parametric down-conversion lithium niobate devices.
on a coarse wavelength-division-multiplexing grid that spans 140 nm by using a 300-μm-long poled region in a thin-film periodically-poled lithium-niobate ridge waveguide bonded to silicon. The pairs are generated via spontaneous parametric downconversion pumped by a continuous-wave tunable laser source. The small mode area of the waveguide allows for efficient interaction in a short length of the waveguide and, as a result, permits photon-pair generation over a broad range of signal-idler wavelengths.
The development of quantum technologies on nanophotonic platforms has seen momentous progress in the past decade. Despite that, a demonstration of time-frequency entanglement over a broad spectral width is still lacking. Here we present an efficient source of ultrabroadband entangled photon pairs on a periodically poled lithium niobate nanophotonic waveguide. Employing dispersion engineering, we demonstrate a record-high 100 THz (1.2 μm-2 μm) generation bandwidth with a high efficiency of 13 GHz/mW and excellent noise performance with the coincidence-to-accidental ratio exceeding 10^{5}. We also measure strong time-frequency entanglement with over 98% two-photon interference visibility.