Versatile and precise quantum state engineering by using nonlinear interferometers

Abstract

The availability of photon states with well-defined temporal modes is crucial for photonic quantum technologies. Ever since the inception of generating photonic quantum states through pulse pumped spontaneous parametric processes, many exquisite efforts have been put on improving the modal purity of the photon states to achieve single-mode operation. However, because the nonlinear interaction and linear dispersion are often mixed in parametric processes, limited successes have been achieved so far only at some specific wavelengths with sophisticated design. In this paper, we resort to a different approach by exploiting an active filtering mechanism originated from interference fringe of nonlinear interferometer. The nonlinear interferometer is realized in a sequential array of nonlinear medium, with a gap in between made of a linear dispersive medium, in which the precise modal control is realized without influencing the phase matching of the parametric process. As a proof-of-principle demonstration of the capability, we present a photon pairs source using a two-stage nonlinear interferometer formed by two identical nonlinear fibers with a standard single mode fiber in between. The results show that spectrally correlated two-photon state via four wave mixing in a single piece nonlinear fiber is modified into factorable state and heralded single-photons with high modal purity and high heralding efficiency are achievable. This novel quantum interferometric method, which can improve the quality of the photon states in almost all the aspects such as modal purity, heralding efficiency, and flexibility in wavelength selection, is proved to be effective and easy to realize.