Institute of Applied Physics Jena, Germany
Abbe Center of Photonics, Jena, Germany
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
Nonlinear frequency conversion in nanostructured optical systems for application in quantum photonics
Photon pairs, quantum states of light comprising exactly two photons, are an important resource for many promising applications in quantum optics, e.g. in quantum communication, quantum computing, or quantum sensing. Photon pairs can be generated by spontaneous nonlinear processes, where photons of a classical pump laser are split into entangled pairs due to the perturbation created by a second- or third-order optical nonlinearity. The properties of the thus created photon pairs, like spectrum, polarization, and spatial distribution, depend to a large extent on the modal properties of the optical system that is used for photon-pair generation. Nanostructuring enables control of the properties of nonlinear optical systems far beyond what is available in naturally occurring nonlinear crystals. Hence, nonlinear nanostructured optical systems provide many opportunities for advanced tailoring of photon pairs for quantum applications. I will discuss our efforts towards the design and realization of nanostructured photo-pair sources in waveguides and resonant surfaces as well as potential applications in quantum imaging and spectroscopy.
idler photons of the photon pair propagate in opposite directions.
References
- S. Saravi, T. Pertsch, and F. Setzpfandt, “Photonic crystal waveguides as sources of counterpropagating
factorizable biphoton states,” Opt. Lett. 44, 69 (2019) - S. Saravi, T. Pertsch, and F. Setzpfandt, “Generation of Counterpropagating Path-Entangled Photon Pairs
in a Single Periodic Waveguide,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 18, 183603 (2017) - S. Saravi, A. N. Poddubny, T. Pertsch, F. Setzpfandt, and A. A. Sukhorukov, “Atom mediated spontaneous
parametric down-conversion in periodic waveguides,” Opt. Lett. 42, 4724 (2017) - F. Löchner, A. Fedotova, S. Liu, G. Keeler, G. Peake, S. Saravi, M. Shcherbakov, S. Burger, A. Fedyanin, I.
Brener, T. Pertsch, F. Setzpfandt, and I. Staude, “Polarization-Dependent Second Harmonic Diffraction
from Resonant GaAs Metasurfaces,” ACS Photonics 5, 1786 (2018)
