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Acta Physica Sinica

Fiber-based narrow-band single-photon source with high heralding efficiency

Lei Yang, Xiaoxin Ma, Cui Liang, Guo Xue-Shi, Xiaoying Li

Published Jan 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

According to the correlated photon pairs produced by spontaneous four-wave mixing in dispersion-shifted fiber, we present a telecom-band single-photon source by using mode-locked laser. Single-photons with a -3 dB bandwidth of 1.1 nm are heralded with more than 50% probability. The measured second-order correlation g(2)(0) is equal to 0.090.01. Our source is well suit for quantum communication systems.

DOI
10.7498/aps.60.114206

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According to the correlated photon pairs produced by spontaneous four-wave mixing in dispersion-shifted fiber, we present a telecom-band single-photon source by using mode-locked laser. Single-photons with a -3 dB bandwidth of 1.1 nm are heralded with more than 50% probability. The measured second-order correlation g(2)(0) is equal to 0.090.01. Our source is well suit for quantum communication systems.
We experimentally demonstrate a heralded single photon source at 1290 nm by exploiting the spontaneous four wave mixing in a taper-drawn micro/nano-fiber (MNF). Because the frequency detuning between the pump and heralded single photons is ∼58  THz, the contamination by Raman scattering is significantly reduced at room temperature. Since the MNF is naturally connected to standard single mode fibers via fiber tapers, the source would be compatible with the existing fiber networks. When the emission rate of heralded signal photons is about 4.6 kHz, the measured second-order intensity correlation function g(2)(0) is 0.017±0.002, which is suppressed by a factor of more than 55, relative to the classical limit.
We present a fiber-based source of narrowband heralded single photons in the telecoms C-band. Photon pairs were generated by spontaneous four-wave mixing in photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a germanium-doped region incorporated into its core for enhanced photosensitivity. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) with a bandwidth of 0.2 nm and contrast of 17.5 dB was UV-written into the PCF to reflect a sub-nanometre slice of the photon-pair spectrum. This allowed narrowband photons to be heralded at the proximal end of the fiber by detection events after the distal end. We present photon counting data with a coincidence-to-accidental ratio of up to 70. Our source demonstrates a viable route to fiber-integrated narrowband heralded single photon sources suitable for coupling to quantum memories and interfacing heterogeneous qubit types.
Single photon sources are fundamental elements for quantum information science, mainly for quantum key distribution (QKD) applications. Nevertheless, on-demand single photon sources are difficult to obtain, and their implementation in a practical application, such as QKD, demands further developments. A different approach to a single photon source is based on the generation of quantum correlated photon-pairs. In that case, the detection of one photon of the pair heralds the presence of the second photon. In this work, we present a heralded single photon source based on the spontaneous four-wave mixing (FWM) process in optical fibers. We characterize theoretically the heralded photon source by means of the conditional second-order coherence function, gc(2) , with gc(2) = 0 for a perfect single photon source. We observe the nonclassical nature of the source, with gc(2) ≪ 1 far below the classical limit. Our results also show that the Raman scattering in general degrades the quality of the source, due to the generation of uncorrelated photons. However, our findings show that in some frequency regimes we are able to observe a gc(2) ≈ 10−3. Moreover, our analysis shows that the propagation of the photons in a standard single mode fiber (SSMF) does not change significantly the value of gc(2), for distances of L < 25/α, with α the loss coefficient of the SSMF. This results can help to guide the development of single photon sources for quantum information applications.
An actual task of quantum communications over long distances is the creation of a bright source of photon pairs operating at standard wavelengths of fiber optic communication lines. In this work, we experimentally investigated the spectral and correlation characteristics of photon pairs generated on the phenomenon of spontaneous four-wave mixing in a highly nonlinear photonic-crystal fiber with a wavelength of one of the photons near 1.5 μm. The demonstrated source can be used as an efficient single photon generator at a telecommunications wavelength with prediction and tuning over a wide spectral range.
Starting from the derived expression of the Bogoliubov transformation for a broadband pulsed pump, we theoretically characterize the heralded single-photon source, which is based on the signal and idler photon pairs produced in optical fiber via spontaneous four-wave mixing by a pulsed pump. The second-order intensity correlation function, heralding efficiency, indistinguishability, and brightness of the heralded single photons as a function of source parameters, are analyzed and discussed. The validity of the theoretical analysis and calculations are confirmed by the experimental results. The investigations are useful for optimizing the source parameters and for developing a single-photon source suitable for quantum-information processing.