The generation of photon pairs from nanoscale structures with high rates is still a challenge for the integration of quantum devices, as it suffers from parasitic signals from the substrate. In this work, we report type-0 spontaneous parametric down-conversion at 1550 nm from individual bottom-up grown zinc-blende GaAs nanowires with lengths of up to 5 μm and diameters of up to 450 nm. The nanowires were deposited on a transparent ITO substrate, and we measured a background-free coincidence rate of 0.05 Hz in a Hanbury–Brown–Twiss setup. Taking into account transmission losses, the pump fluence, and the nanowire volume, we achieved a biphoton generation of 60 GHz/Wm, which is at least 3 times higher than that of previously reported single nonlinear micro- and nanostructures. We also studied the correlations between the second-harmonic generation and the spontaneous parametric down-conversion intensities with respect to the pump polarization and in different individual nanowires.

We report 60 GHz/Wm photon pair generation via type-0 spontaneous parametric down-conversion at 1550 nm from individual free-standing GaAs nanowires with sub-450 nm diameter and lengths up to 5 μm.