Counter-propagating entangled photon pairs from monolayer GaSe

Entangled photon sources play a pivotal role in most of the optical systems that utilize quantum effects. Those include quantum key distribution, quantum computing, metrology, sensing and imaging. Photon pair generation using spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) is one of the most popular routes for producing entangled photons. While SPDC has become more popular, the creation of entangled photon pairs in a degree of freedom, such as polarization, is more challenging. The difficulty is related in no small part to the birefringence of the structure where the generation takes place. Birefringence results in distinguishing information that hinders the production of entanglement in the platforms where SPDC has been most popular including ferroelectric crystals.Despite this limitation, entangled sources have been realized in bulk crystals via well designed interference techniques, which often include additional compensating optics. As the boundaries of optical quantum information science continue to be extended, multi-photon entanglement is now required. Solutions based on SPDC have been attempted, and while some outstanding results have been achieved, the interferometers and compensation procedures become increasingly complex as the size of the entangled state grows. Such scalability and stability issues are directly addressed by integrated entangled photon sources, and while still in their infancy, they promise to help a great deal towards the practical utilization and the production of entanglement on a larger scale.Semiconductors are an ideal platform to fabricate such integrated entangled photon sources. Recently, it was demonstrated that the gallium-arsenide (GaAs) based Bragg refection waveguide (BRW), could efficiently produce photon pairs via SPDC. This platfrom was shown to have a distinct advantage over other semiconductor sources, due largely to its monolithic architecture and its layered epitaxy, which underpins many photonic devices. In this work we demonstrate yet another advantage: the intrinsic capability of the BRW to directly produce polarization entangled photon pairs, without any additional interferometry, spectral filtering, compensation or post-selection. Not only do we show that the BRW can produce entangled photons, but we wish to emphasize that the traditional compensation and interferometric methods used to create entanglement, which presumably would have occurred on chip, may no longer be necessary. Our experimental results confirm that the BRW has the potential to be one of the very first self-contained integrated room temperature resources of entanglement.In this talk various approaches for utilizing SPDC processes in various integration platforms will be discussed. The root cause of entanglement generation is the lack of birefringence in these material systems, which otherwise makes exact phase matching impossible in bulk crystals. Because of this, cross-polarized photons propagate at almost identical group velocities, making off-chip path compensation unnecessary.

Emission of photon pairs has been numerically investigated in both the volume and at the boundaries of layered Gallium-Nitride/Aluminium-Nitride (GaN/AlN) structures that occurs in the process of spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC). The developed model of SPDC is one dimensional and exploits the quantization of momentum of an electromagnetic field (EM field). Nonlinear boundary conditions for the quantized EM field between the linear (AlN) and nonlinear (GaN) layers are treated by the transfer-matrix formalism. The developed theory describes both the volume and interface emissions of photon pairs and it also allows for their separation. The emission of photon pairs from interfaces contributes by 9.7 % of total number of emitted photon pairs. In the spectral regions with low volume emission, the spectral joint photon number density for interface emitted photon pairs reaches up to 40 % of the quantity characterizing the photon pairs emitted in the volume.

The standard theory of metals, Fermi liquid theory, hinges on the key assumption that although the electrons interact, the low-energy excitation spectrum stands in a one-to-one correspondence with that of a non-interacting system. In the normal state of the copper-oxide high-temperature superconductors, drastic deviations from the Fermi liquid picture are obtained, highlighted by a pseudogap, broad spectral features and T-linear resistivity. A successful theory in this context must confront the highly constraining scaling argument which establishes that all 4-Fermi interactions are irrelevant (except for pairing) at a Fermi surface. This argument lays plain that new low-energy degrees of freedom are necessary. This paper focuses on the series of experiments on copper-oxide superconductors which reveal that the number of low-energy addition states per electron per spin exceeds unity, in direct violation of the key Fermi liquid tenet. These experiments point to new degrees of freedom, not made out of the elemental excitations, as the key mechanism by which Fermi liquid theory breaks down in the cuprates. A recent theoretical advance which permits an explicit integration of the high-energy scale in the standard model for the cuprates reveals the source of the new dynamical degrees of freedom at low energies, a charge 2e bosonic field which has nothing to do with pairing but rather represents the mixing with the high-energy scales. We demonstrate explicitly that at half-filling, this new degree of freedom provides a dynamical mechanism for the generation of the charge gap and antiferromagnetism in the insulating phase. At finite doping, many of the anomalies of the normal state of the cuprates including the pseudogap, T-linear resistivity and the mid-infrared band are reproduced. A possible route to superconductivity is explored.

Entanglement and encoding in discrete frequency bins – essentially a quantum analogue of wavelength-division multiplexing – represents a relatively new degree of freedom for quantum information with photons. In this talk I discuss biphoton frequency combs, generated either by spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) from on-chip microring resonators or by spectral filtering of spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) in second order nonlinear crystals. Potential advantages include generation of high dimensional units of quantum information (qudits), which can carry multiple qubits per photon, robust transmission over fiber, frequency parallelism and routing, and compatibility with on-chip implementations, as well as hyperentanglement with other photonic degrees, e.g., time-frequency hyperentanglement. Since the initial experiments less than two years ago, frequency bin quantum photonics has been advancing rapidly [1-8]. In this talk I will discuss a method using pulse shapers and phase modulators in order to mix different frequencies and perform two photon interference experiments for characterization of the frequency-bin entanglement. Similar components (pulse shapers and phase modulators) may be used to manipulate the frequency-encoded quantum states; this will be described in another talk by our collaborators at Oak Ridge National Labs. I will also discuss the use of time bins and frequency bins as independent degrees of freedom in a quantum encoding fashion to realize what we believe to be the first deterministic two qudit gates. Finally, I comment briefly on potential applications and on prospects for realization of integrated frequency bin quantum photonics.

Thermodynamic metric usually works only for those black holes with more than one conserved charge, thereby excluding the Schwarzschild black hole. In this paper, however, different versions of thermodynamic metric are computed and compared for the Schwarzschild-like black hole by introducing new degrees of freedom. These new degrees of freedom have two purposes. First, the deformed metric may be treated offshell to the ordinary Schwarzschild black hole, and onshell physics corresponds to the submanifold by gauge fixing of this additional degree of freedom. In particular, the thermal Ricci scalar for the Schwarzschild black hole, though different for various deformations, can be obtained by switching off the deformation. Second, while deformed metric is treated onshell, a divergent Ricci scalar may signal an exotic phase in which new physical degrees of freedom manifest. This paper considers the new degree of freedom as the running Newton constant, a cutoff scale for regular black holes, a noncommutative deformation or the deformed parameter in the nonextensive Tsallis–Rènyi entropy.

Summary form only given. The frequency correlation (or decorrelation) of photon pairs is of great importance in long-range quantum communications and photonic quantum computing. We experimentally characterize a spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) source, based on a β-Barium Borate (BBO) crystal cut for type-II phase matching at 1550 nm which has the capability to emit photons with positive or no spectral correlations. Our system, depicted in Fig. 1a), employs a carefully designed detection method exploiting two InGaAs detectors.In the process of SPDC the joint effect of the nonlinear crystal and the collection optics can be described using an effective phase matching function [2,3]. Its diagonal slices can be accessed by measuring the joint spectral amplitudes for a range of CW pump laser settings. For that we measured the relative detection time statistics of photons traveling through two long fibers and exploit the dispersion experienced in single mode fiber [1]. The measurement results are depicted in Fig. 1b) and agree well with the theoretical model presented in Ref. [2]. The EPMF in this configuration suitable for generating positively-correlated or uncorrelated photon pairs without using spectral filtering when pumped using broadband pulses. This measurement was only possible because of the improved sensitivity of our fiber spectrometer, which was achieved by using a combination of free-running and gated InGaAs detectors.

The Hong–Ou–Mandel interference plays a vital role in many quantum optical applications where indistinguishability of two photons is important. Such photon pairs are commonly generated as the signal and idler in the polarization-degenerate spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). To scale this approach to a larger number of photons, we demonstrate how two independent signal photons radiated into different spatial modes can be rendered conditionally indistinguishable by a heralding measurement performed on their respective idlers. We use the SPDC in a whispering gallery resonator, which is already proven to be versatile sources of quantum states. Its extreme conversion efficiency allowed us to perform our measurements with only 50 nW of in-coupled pump power in each propagation direction. The Hong–Ou–Mandel interference of two counterpropagating signal photons manifested itself in the fourfold coincidence rate, where the detection of two idler photons heralds a pair of signal photons with a desired temporal overlap. We achieved the Hong–Ou–Mandel dip contrast of 74% ± 5%. Importantly, the optical bandwidth of all involved photons is of the order of a MHz and is continuously tunable. This, on the one hand, makes it possible to achieve the necessary temporal measurement resolution with standard electronics and, on the other hand, creates a quantum state source compatible with other candidates for qubit implementation, such as optical transitions in solid-state or vaporous systems. We also discuss the possibility of generating photon pairs with similar temporal modes from two different whispering gallery resonators.

Verifying entanglement with experimental measurements requires that we take the limitations of experimental techniques into account, while still proving that the data obtained could not have been generated from a classical source. In the energy-time degree of freedom, this challenge is exacerbated because realistic high-resolution frequency measurements are obtained as a function of light passing through arbitrary filters positioned at uneven intervals. In this work, we show how the data gathered from these kinds of measurements can be used to fully certify the degree of energy and timing correlations needed to certify energy-time entanglement without having to make special assumptions about the state or the measurement device. We accomplish this by showing how to construct a continuous-variable probability density from the data that can closely estimate, but never overestimate the correlations (and entanglement) actually present in the system, and note that these methods are applicable to all continuous-variable degrees of freedom (e.g., spatial, field quadratures, etc.). We illustrate the feasibility of these methods using frequency and timing correlations obtainable from photon pairs in spontaneous parametric down-conversion.

Entangled photons are a crucial resource for linear optical quantum communication and quantum computation. Besides the remarkable progress of photon state engineering using atomic memories (Kimble (2008); Yuan et al. (2008)) the majority of current experiments is based on the production of photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), where the entangled photon pair is concluded from post-selection of randomly occurring coincidences. Here we present new insights into the heralded generation of photon states (Barz et al. (2010); Wagenknecht et al. (2010)) that are maximally entangled in polarization (Schrodinger (1935)) with linear optics and standard photon detection from SPDC (Kwiat et al. (1995)). We utilize the down-conversion state corresponding to the generation of three pairs of photons, where the coincident detection of four auxiliary photons unambiguously heralds the successful preparation of the entangled state (Śliwa & Banaszek (2003)). This controlled generation of entangled photon states is a significant step towards the applicability of a linear optics quantum network (Nielsen & Chuang (2000)), in particular for entanglement distribution (Bennett et al. (1996)), entanglement swapping (Kaltenbaek et al. (2009); Pan et al. (1998)), quantum teleportation (Bouwmeester et al. (1997)), quantum cryptography (Bennett & Brassard (1984); Ekert (1991); Jennewein et al. (2000)) and scalable approaches towards photonics-based quantum computing schemes (Browne & Rudolph (2004); Gottesman & Chuang (1999); Knill et al. (2001)).

Quantum state engineering, the cornerstone of quantum photonic technologies, mainly relies on spontaneous parametric downconversion and four-wave mixing, where one or two pump photons spontaneously decay into a photon pair. Both of these nonlinear effects require momentum conservation for the participating photons, which strongly limits the versatility of the resulting quantum states. Nonlinear metasurfaces have subwavelength thickness and allow the relaxation of this constraint; when combined with resonances, they greatly expand the possibilities of quantum state engineering. Here, we generated entangled photons via spontaneous parametric downconversion in semiconductor metasurfaces with high-quality factor, quasi-bound state in the continuum resonances. By enhancing the quantum vacuum field, our metasurfaces boost the emission of nondegenerate entangled photons within multiple narrow resonance bands and over a wide spectral range. A single resonance or several resonances in the same sample, pumped at multiple wavelengths, can generate multifrequency quantum states, including cluster states. These features reveal metasurfaces as versatile sources of complex states for quantum information.

We present a theoretical and experimental investigation of the emission characteristics and the flux of photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion in quasi-phase matched bulk crystals for the use in quantum communication sources. We show that, by careful design, one can attain well defined modes close to the fundamental mode of optical fibers and obtain high coupling efficiencies also for bulk crystals, these being more easily aligned than crystal waveguides. We distinguish between singles coupling, ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{s}}$ and ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{i}}$, conditional coincidence, ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{\mathrm{i}\ensuremath{\mid}\mathrm{s}}$, and pair coupling, ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{\mathrm{c}}$, and show how each of these parameters can be maximized by varying the focusing of the pump mode and the fiber-matched modes using standard optical elements. Specifically we analyze a periodically poled KTP-crystal pumped by a $532\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}$ laser creating photon pairs at $810\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}$ and $1550\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{nm}$. Numerical calculations lead to coupling efficiencies above 93% at optimal focusing, which is found by the geometrical relation $L∕{z}_{R}$ to be $\ensuremath{\approx}1$ to 2 for the pump mode and $\ensuremath{\approx}2$ to 3 for the fiber-modes, where $L$ is the crystal length and ${z}_{R}$ is the Rayleigh-range of the mode-profile. These results are independent on $L$. By showing that the single-mode bandwidth decreases $\ensuremath{\propto}1∕L$, we can therefore design the source to produce and couple narrow bandwidth photon pairs well into the fibers. Smaller bandwidth means both less chromatic dispersion for long propagation distances in fibers, and that telecom Bragg gratings can be utilized to compensate for broadened photon packets---a vital problem for time-multiplexed qubits. Longer crystals also yield an increase in fiber photon flux $\ensuremath{\propto}\sqrt{L}$, and so, assuming correct focusing, we can only see advantages using long crystals.

We report on the generation of a bright photon source at telecom wavelengths using spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a type II periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate crystal. Simultaneous resonances of the pump and the two down-converted fields are achieved with a properly designed optical cavity. This triple-resonance optical parametric oscillator operates far below threshold, generating photon pairs at 1560 nm wavelength with a bandwidth of 8 MHz. Time correlation measurements produce an estimate of 27.7 ns for the coherence time, and production rate of 134±25  s−1 MHz−1 mW−1 for photon pairs. As photon pairs in the telecom regime are suitable for long-distance transmission, this source may find application in quantum communications.

Advancing quantum information processing is predicated on the preparation of ever-larger multiqubit states. Photonic realizations of such states may be achieved by increasing the number of photons populating the state or the number of qubits encoded per photon. Typical approaches to the latter strategy utilize distinct degrees of freedom of the photon field. We present here an approach that encodes two qubits per photon in the spatial parity of its transverse spatial profile. Simple linear optical devices transform each parity qubit separately or the two qubits jointly. Furthermore, we demonstrate that entangled photon pairs produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion may be used to prepare arbitrary four-qubit states through sculpting the spatial profile of the classical optical pump. Two examples are highlighted---the preparation of two-photon four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and $W$ states, whose encoding in a photon pair has thus far eluded other approaches.

Summary form only given. By far the most efficient source of two-particle entangled state is spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). Especially, cw laser pumped type-II SPDC has been widely treated as a good source of entangled photon pairs, since one can easily prepare a polarization Bell state. However, femtosecond pulse pumped type-II SPDC shows poor quantum interference visibility when a thick crystal is used. To restore the visibility, one has to use narrow-band spectral filters at the expense of available photon flux. We demonstrate a scheme for high-visibility two-photon interference with thick (3.4 mm.) type-II BaB/sub 2/O/sub 4/ (BBO) crystals in femtosecond pulse pumped SPDC. Polarization Bell states can be prepared using this method without spectral and amplitude post-selection.

Optical-coherence tomography (OCT) is a technique that employs light in order to measure the internal structure of semitransparent, e.g. biological, samples. It is based on the interference pattern of low-coherence light. Quantum-OCT (QOCT), instead, employs the correlation properties of entangled photon pairs, for example, generated by the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). The usual QOCT scheme uses photon pairs characterised by a joint-spectral amplitude with strict spectral anti-correlations. It has been shown that, in contrast with its classical counterpart, QOCT provides resolution enhancement and dispersion cancellation. In this paper, we revisit the theory of QOCT and extend the theoretical model so as to include photon pairs with arbitrary spectral correlations. We present experimental results that complement the theory and explain the physical underpinnings appearing in the interference pattern. In our experiment, we utilize a pump for the SPDC process ranging from continuous wave to pulsed in the femtosecond regime, and show that cross-correlation interference effects appearing for each pair of layers may be directly suppressed for a sufficiently large pump bandwidth. Our results provide insights and strategies that could guide practical implementations of QOCT.