Autonomous absolute calibration of an ICCD camera in single-photon
detection regime
Luo Qi,
Felix Just,
Gerd Leuchs,
Maria V. Chekhova
Optics Express
24
26444-26453
(2016)
| Journal
| PDF
Intensified charge coupled device (ICCD) cameras are widely used in vari-ous applications such as microscopy, astronomy, spectroscopy. Often they are used as single-photon detectors, with thresholding being an essential part of the readout. In this paper, we measure the quantum efficiency of an ICCD camera in the single-photon de-tection mode using the Klyshko absolute calibration technique. The quantum efficiency is obtained as a function of the threshold value and of the wavelength of the detected light. In addition, we study the homogeneity of the photon sensitivity over the camera chip area. The experiment is performed in the autonomous regime, without using any additional detectors. We therefore demonstrate the self-calibration of an ICCD camera.
Engineering the Frequency Spectrum of Bright Squeezed Vacuum via Group
Velocity Dispersion in an SU(1,1) Interferometer
Samuel Lemieux,
Mathieu Manceau,
Polina R. Sharapova,
Olga V. Tikhonova,
Robert W. Boyd,
Gerd Leuchs,
Maria V. Chekhova
Bright squeezed vacuum, a promising tool for quantum information, can be generated by high-gain parametric down-conversion. However, its frequency and angular spectra are typically quite broad, which is undesirable for applications requiring single-mode radiation. We tailor the frequency spectrum of high-gain parametric down-conversion using an SU(1,1) interferometer consisting of two nonlinear crystals with a dispersive medium separating them. The dispersive medium allows us to select a narrow band of the frequency spectrum to be exponentially amplified by high-gain parametric amplification. The frequency spectrum is thereby narrowed from (56.5±0.1) to (1.22±0.02) THz and, in doing so, the number of frequency modes is reduced from approximately 50 to 1.82±0.02. Moreover, this method provides control and flexibility over the spectrum of the generated light through the timing of the pump.
Hybrid photonic-crystal fiber for single-mode phase matched generation of third harmonic and photon triplets
Andrea Cavanna,
Felix Just,
Xin Jiang,
Gerd Leuchs,
Maria V. Chekhova,
Philip St. J. Russell,
Nicolas Y. Joly
All-fiber systems for third harmonic generation are of great interest because they can be used for the inverse process, namely, the generation of entangled photon triplets. Usually, chromatic dispersion prevents phase matching between the incident and generated radiation when they are both guided in an LP01-like mode. Here, we present a hybrid photonic crystal fiber that has been designed for phase matched third harmonic generation from 1596 to 532 nm in single-lobed modes. The third harmonic radiation is guided by an all-solid bandgap microstructure, while the pump frequency is confined by conventional total internal reflection. The fiber is also suitable for the generation of photon triplet states.
Nonlinear interferometers in quantum optics
M. V. Chekhova,
Z. Y. Ou
Advances in Optics and Photonics
8
104-155
(2016)
| Journal
We review the main works in the field of nonlinear interferometers, which has been developing ever since the start of nonlinear optics and has seen growing interest in recent years due to the applications in quantum information and quantum metrology. Because the class of schemes that are referred to as nonlinear interferometers is too broad, we restrict the consideration to the cases in which crystals, fibers, or atomic systems producing the nonlinear effect are placed inside the interferometer, and only linear phase shifts are imposed. As a nonlinear effect, we consider four-wave mixing and parametric down-conversion, at both low and high gain.
Tunable optical parametric generator based on the pump spatial walk-off
Andrea Cavanna,
Felix Just,
Polina R. Sharapova,
Michael Taheri,
Gerd Leuchs,
Maria V. Chekhova
We suggest a novel optical parametric generator (OPG) in which one of the downconverted beams is spontaneously generated along the Poynting vector of the pump beam. In this configuration, the generation takes advantage of the walk-off of the extraordinary pump, rather than being degraded by it. As a result, the generated signal and idler beams are bright due to a high conversion efficiency, spatially nearly single mode due to the preferred direction of the Poynting vector, tunable over a wide range of wavelengths and broadband. The two beams are also correlated in frequency and in the photon number per pulse. Furthermore, due to their thermal statistics, these beams can be used as a pump to efficiently generate other nonlinear processes. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America
Ring-shaped spectra of parametric downconversion and entangled photons
that never meet
Kirill Yu. Spasibko,
Denis A. Kopylov,
Tatiana V. Murzina,
Gerd Leuchs,
Maria V. Chekhova
We report on the observation of an unusual type of parametric downconversion. In the regime where collinear degenerate emission is in the anomalous range of group-velocity dispersion, its spectrum is restricted in both angle and wavelength. Detuning from exact collinear-degenerate phase-matching leads to a ring shape of the wavelength-angular spectrum, suggesting a new type of spatiotemporal coherence and entanglement of photon pairs. By imposing a phase varying in a specific way in both angle and wavelength, one can obtain an interesting state of an entangled photon pair, with the two photons being never at the same point at the same time. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America
Heralded source of bright multi-mode mesoscopic sub-Poissonian light
T. Sh. Iskhakov,
V. C. Usenko,
U. L. Andersen,
R. Filip,
M. V. Chekhova,
G. Leuchs
In a direct detection scheme, we observed 7.8 dB of twin-beam squeezing for multi-mode two-color squeezed vacuum generated via parametric downconversion. Applying postselection, we conditionally prepared a sub-Poissonian state of light containing 6.3 . 10(5) photons per pulse on the average with the Fano factor 0.63 +/- 0.01. The scheme can be considered as the heralded preparation of pulses with the mean energy varying between tens and hundreds of fJ and the uncertainty considerably below the shot-noise level. Such pulses can be used in metrology (for instance, for radiometer calibration), as well as for probing multi-mode non-linear optical effects. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America
Low-noise macroscopic twin beams
Timur Sh. Iskhakov,
Vladyslav C. Usenko,
Radim Filip,
Maria V. Chekhova,
Gerd Leuchs
Applying a multiphoton-subtraction technique to the two-color macroscopic squeezed vacuum state of light generated via high-gain parametric down-conversion we conditionally prepare a different state of light: bright multimode low-noise twin beams. A lower noise in the sum of the photon numbers opens a possibility to encode information into this variable while keeping the nonclassical character of the state. The obtained results demonstrate up to eightfold suppression of noise in each beam while preserving and even moderately improving the nonclassical photon-number correlations between the beams. The prepared low-noise macroscopic state, containing up to 2000 photons per mode, is not among the Gaussian states achievable through nonlinear optical processes. Apart from that, we suggest a method for measuring quantum efficiency, which is based on the Fano factor measurement. The proposed technique substantially improves the usefulness of twin beams for quantum communication and metrology.
Nonlinear interferometer for tailoring the frequency spectrum of bright squeezed vacuum
T. Sh. Iskhakov,
S. Lemieux,
A. Perez,
R. W. Boyd,
G. Leuchs,
M. V. Chekhova
JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS
63
(1 SI)
64-70
(2016)
| Journal
We propose a method for tailoring the frequency spectrum of bright squeezed vacuum by generating it in a nonlinear interferometer, consisting of two down-converting nonlinear crystals separated by a dispersive medium. Due to a faster dispersive spreading of higher order Schmidt modes, the spectral width of the radiation at the output is reduced as the length of the dispersive medium is increased. Preliminary results show 30% spectral narrowing.
Kontakt
Forschungsgruppe Maria Chekhova
Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts Staudtstr. 2 91058 Erlangen
