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International Conference on Optical Communication and Optical Information Processing (OCOIP)

Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with absorption and dispersion from rare earth ions

Wei Li, Hongwei Wang, Chunling Ding, Xiangying Hao, Chenzhi Yuan, Rui‐Bo Jin

Published Mar 17, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The coherent interactions between photons and rare earth ion ensembles are crucial for quantum storage and quantum information processing. Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference, a well-known quantum interference phenomenon, has been widely used in precision measurement applications. However, there have been no reports to date on observing coherent interactions between light and ionic ensembles using HOM interferometry. In this study, we experimentally generated entangled photons from two 10-mm-long type-0 phase-matched PPKTP crystals. Then we constructed a HOM interferometer and achieved a HOM dip with a visibility of 82.4% and a width of 152.5 ± 0.2 fs. Finally, we inserted a N d3+ : Y V O4 (rare earth ion) crystal into the optical path and successfully observed the splitting of the HOM dip. This experiment may provide valuable insights into light-matter interactions and could be beneficial for quantum storage applications.

DOI
10.1117/12.3060371

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The coherent interactions between photons and rare earth ion ensembles are crucial for quantum storage and quantum information processing. Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference, a well-known quantum interference phenomenon, has been widely used in precision measurement applications. However, there have been no reports to date on observing coherent interactions between light and ionic ensembles using HOM interferometry. In this study, we experimentally generated entangled photons from two 10-mm-long type-0 phase-matched PPKTP crystals. Then we constructed a HOM interferometer and achieved a HOM dip with a visibility of 82.4% and a width of 152.5 ± 0.2 fs. Finally, we inserted a N d3+ : Y V O4 (rare earth ion) crystal into the optical path and successfully observed the splitting of the HOM dip. This experiment may provide valuable insights into light-matter interactions and could be beneficial for quantum storage applications.
Two-photon interference, commonly known as Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference [1] , has attracted a great deal of interest in quantum sensing, including the precision timing measurements [2] and quantum optical coherence tomography [3] . While the dip of the HOM interference is the direct measure of the purity of the single-photon, the width of the HOM dip relates to the coherence time of the interfering photons. The broad consensus for using the HOM interferometer for sensing application remained the HOM dip width as the limiting factor for the precision measurements. As a consequence, the ultra-broadband photon sources have long been hailed as a vital prerequisite for ultra-precise HOM interferometry. Here, we have studied the variation in the width of the HOM dip with the crystal length for the continuous-wave pump laser and measured the HOM dip as low as 8.2 ± 0.2 µm corresponding to the spectral width of the single-photon source of 79.6±1.9 nm useful for sensitive sensing applications.
Two-photon interference and Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect are relevant tools for quantum metrology and quantum information processing. In optical coherence tomography, the HOM effect is exploited to achieve high-resolution measurements with the width of the HOM dip being the main parameter. On the other hand, applications like dense coding require high-visibility performance. Here we address high-order dispersion effects in two-photon interference and study, theoretically and experimentally, the dependence of the visibility and the width of the HOM dip on both the pump spectrum and the downconverted photon spectrum. In particular, a spatial light modulator is exploited to experimentally introduce and manipulate a custom phase function to simulate the high-order dispersion effects. Overall, we show that it is possible to effectively introduce high-order dispersion effects on the propagation of photons and also to compensate for such effect. Our results clarify the role of the different dispersion phenomena and pave the way for optimization procedures in quantum technological applications involving PDC photons and optical fibers.
Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) interferometry has emerged as a valuable means for quantum sensing applications, particularly in measuring physical parameters that influence the relative optical delay between photon pairs. Unlike classical techniques, HOM-based quantum sensors offer higher resolution due to the intrinsic dispersion cancellation property of correlated photon pairs. Due to the use of single photons, HOM-based quantum sensors typically involve a large integration time to acquire the signal and subsequent post-processing for high-resolution measurements, restricting their use for real-time operations. Based on our understanding of the relationship between measurement resolution and the gain medium length that produces photon pairs, we report here on the development of an HOM-based quantum sensor for high-precision group index measurements. Using a 1 mm long periodically poled KTP (PPKTP) crystal for photon-pair generation, we have measured the group index with a precision of ∼6.75×10−6 per centimeter of sample length at an integration time of 100 ms, surpassing the previous reports by 400%. Typically, the measurement range reduces with the increase in the resolution. However, using a novel scheme compensating photon delay due to group index changes stepwise with an optical delay stage, we have measured the group index variation of PPKTP crystal over a range of 3.5 × 10−3 for a temperature change from 25 to 200 °C, corresponding to an optical delay adjustment of ∼200 μm while maintaining the same precision (∼6.75×10−6 per centimeter of sample length). The current results establish the usefulness of HOM-interferometer-based quantum sensors for fast, precise, and long-range measurements in various applications, including quantum optical coherence tomography.
Abstract Over the last several decades, quantum entanglement has been intensively studied for potential applications in quantum information science. The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) dip is the most important test tool for direct proof of entanglement between paired photons, whose coincidence detection results in anticorrelation due to photon bunching on a beam splitter. Although anticorrelation is due to destructive quantum interference between paired photons, a wavelength-sensitive interference fringe has never been observed in any HOM-type experiments. Here, a typical HOM dip is investigated for entangled photon pairs generated by parametric down conversion processes (SPDC) to understand fundamental physics of anticorrelation. In addition, a pure coherence optics-based Hong-Ou-Mandel scheme is proposed and analyzed for general understanding of anticorrelation in an interferometric system. This study sheds light on deterministic quantum correlation control and opens the door to potential applications of on-demand quantum information science.
Quantum interference forces two indistinguishable input photons to depart a beamsplitter in the same (of two possible) spatial output modes; this is known as the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect. It provides a quantitative way of measuring the distinguishability between two photons and also has been utilised to determine their relative temporal delays [1, 2]. HOM interferometry offers numerous advantages over its classical counterpart, most importantly it lacks any dependence on the phase of the photons and therefore can potentially provide reliable measurements in environments where the phase is unstable. To date there have been very few investigations on the precision that is achievable with HOM interferometry. Experiments with collinear geometries have yielded sensitivities as low as 0.1fs however these approaches are limited to measurements of birefringence and other polarisation dependent effects [3, 4], as the precision derives from the inherently stable shared path of the photon pairs. Typical non-shared path HOM interferometers exhibit resolution of roughly 1–3 fs (0.3–1 μm).
Recently, different experimental methods to investigate the entangled two-photon absorption (ETPA) process in a variety of materials have been reported. The present work reports on a different approach on which the ETPA process is detected based on the changes induced on the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferogram of two photons produced by a spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) Type-II process. Using an organic solution of the laser dye Rhodamine B as a model, it is demonstrated that ETPA at 800nm can be monitored by the changes in the temporal-width and visibility of the HOM interferogram produced by the photons at a beam splitter after interacting with the sample. Additionally, we present a detail model in which the sample is modeled as a filtering function which fullfills the energy conservation conditions required by ETPA, allowing to explain the experimental observations with excellent agreement. We believe that this work represents a new perspective to study the ETPA process, by using an ultra-sensitive quantum interference technique and a detailed mathematical model of the process.