Phase sensitive amplification for integrated quantum photonics

Stefano Paesani

Jochen Schröder, Youngbin Zhang, Chad A. Husko +2 more

Phase sensitive amplification (PSA) is an attractive technology for integrated all-optical signal processing, due to it's potential for noiseless amplification, phase regeneration and generation of squeezed light. In this talk I will review our results on implementing four-wave-mixing based PSA inside integrated photonic devices. In particular I will discuss PSA in chalcogenide ridge waveguides and silicon slow-light photonic crystals. We achieve PSA in both pump- and signal-degenerate schemes with maximum extinction ratios of 11 (silicon) and 18 (chalcogenide) dB. I will further discuss the influence of two-photon absorption and free carrier effects on the performance of silicon-based PSAs.

Andre Vatarescu

A scrutiny of parametric amplification reveals deficiencies in the approximated solution. A fully quantum optic analysis identifies phase-dependent gain coefficients as the physical mechanism for phase-sensitive amplification with low pump power for integrated photonics.

Stefano Paesani

Iman Jizan, Bryn A. Bell, L. G. Helt +3 more

We present a novel measurement technique to perform full phase-sensitive tomography on the joint spectrum of photon pair sources, using stimulated four-wave mixing and phase-sensitive amplification. Applying this method to an integrated silicon nanowire source with a frequency chirped pump laser, we are able to observe a corresponding phase change in the spectral amplitude that would otherwise be hidden in standard intensity measurements. With a highly nonlinear fiber source, we show that phase-sensitive measurements have superior sensitivity to small spectral features when compared to intensity measurements. This technique enables more complete characterization of photon pair sources based on nonlinear photonics.

Thomas P. Pearsall