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Optics Letters

Silica fibers as spontaneous four-wave mixing sources of photon pairs: Raman noise revisited

Philippe Delaye

Published Aug 19, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Sources of photon pairs based on spontaneous four-wave mixing in silica fibers are generally considered limited by the spectrally broad spontaneous Raman scattering noise. I experimentally show that fluorescence from native or residual doping defects in silica fibers can become preponderant in situations where Raman scattering is normally eliminated, revealing a new, to the best of my knowledge, source of noise in silica-fiber-based sources of pairs of photons. I show that this noise depends on the fiber used, and that a new parameter must be carefully surveyed for the optimization of a fibered source of entangled pairs of photons.

DOI
10.1364/ol.604331

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Sources of photon pairs based on spontaneous four-wave mixing in silica fibers are generally considered limited by the spectrally broad spontaneous Raman scattering noise. I experimentally show that fluorescence from native or residual doping defects in silica fibers can become preponderant in situations where Raman scattering is normally eliminated, revealing a new, to the best of my knowledge, source of noise in silica-fiber-based sources of pairs of photons. I show that this noise depends on the fiber used, and that a new parameter must be carefully surveyed for the optimization of a fibered source of entangled pairs of photons.
We experimentally demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, the generation of correlated photon pairs in a liquid-core photonic crystal fiber. Moreover, we show that, thanks to the specific Raman properties of liquids, the Raman noise (which is the main limitation of the performance of silica-core fiber-based correlated photon pair sources) is highly reduced. With a demonstrated coincident-to-accidental ratio equal to 63 and a pair generation efficiency of about 10 −4 per pump pulse, this work contributes to the development of high-quality correlated photon pair sources for quantum communications.
Weexperimentally demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, the generation of correlated photon pairs in a liquid-core photonic crystalfiber.Moreover, we show that, thanks to the specific Raman properties of liquids, the Ramannoise (which is themain limitation of the performance of silica-core fiber-based correlated photon pair sources) is highly reduced.With a demonstrated coincident-to-accidental ratio equal to 63 and a pair generation efficiency of about 10 per pump pulse, this work contributes to the development of high-quality correlated photon pair sources for quantumcommunications.
We study both experimentally and theoretically the generation of photon pairs by spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in standard birefringent optical fibers. The ability to produce a range of two-photon spectral states, from highly correlated (entangled) to completely factorable, by means of cross-polarized birefringent phase matching, is explored. A simple model is developed to predict the spectral state of the photon pair which shows how this can be adjusted by choosing the appropriate pump bandwidth, fiber length and birefringence. Spontaneous Raman scattering is modeled to determine the tradeoff between SFWM and background Raman noise, and the predicted results are shown to agree with experimental data.
Fibered sources of photon pairs can be easily integrated into future quantum communication networks. However, in silica-core fibres, the broadband spectrum of spontaneous Raman scattering strongly contributes to uncorrelated noise photons degrading the quality of the source. To overcome the problem of the silica Raman scattering, a new architecture was recently proposed, with hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (LF-HCPF) whose core and cladding are filled with a non-linear liquid. As opposed to the Raman scattering spectrum of silica, which is broadband and continuous, the Raman scattering spectrum of liquids is composed of narrow lines. Thus, generating photon pairs between these narrow lines permits to avoid the spectral overlap between the SFWM pairs and the Raman photons. A near infra-red LF-HCPCF photon pair source has been demonstrated, featuring a three order of magnitude suppression of the Raman noise [1]. We have also demonstrated the first non-linear LF-PCF with a transmission band and a zero-dispersion-wavelength (ZDW) in the telecom wavelength range combined with a non-linearity of the same order of magnitude as the one of silica, as a first step towards a Raman-free photon pair source in the telecom band [2]. Injecting light on both sides of this fiber in a Sagnac loop configuration can then be used to obtain entanglement.