Aperiodic electro-optic time lens for spectral manipulation of single-photon pulses

Abstract

Electro-optic time lenses are promising experimental components for photonic spectral-temporal processing of quantum information. We report a stable method to realize an electro-optic time lens, which relies on the amplification of an electronic response of a fast photodiode. The method does not require a repetitive clock and may be applied to aperiodic optical signals. We experimentally demonstrate the approach using single-photon pulses, and directly verify its aperiodicity. The approach will enable the construction of complex electro-optic temporal optical systems.

Temporal mode transformations by sequential time and frequency phase modulation for applications in quantum information science

“…Each phase modulator must be driven by a different specified electronic signal for each step in the decomposition, and these must be synchronized with the arrival of the pulse at the EOPMs. Novel schemes to solve this problem have recently been demonstrated by using photonic waveform generation [33].…”

Control and Measurement of Quantum Light Pulses for Quantum Information Science and Technology

“…However, due to material limitations on the amplitude of electro‐optic phase modulation, the effective resolution of spectral‐temporal transformations utilizing the electro‐optic time lens is limited. [ 56 ] Recently it has been shown that a time lens can be realized by utilizing the amplified approximately quadratic signal around the maximum of an impulse response of a photodiode, [ 128 ] see. Figure .…”

“…The enhancement of the maximum intensity of 8 enables possible gain in mode overlap, when including insertion loss of around 3dB. [ 128 ] Adapted with permission from Applied Physics Letters. Copyright 2020, AIP Publishing.…”

“…This can be achieved with electrical schemes such as phase lock loop or by generating the RF wave from the pulse train itself, as demonstrated for instance in ref. [128]. Another source of RF noise may be the RF amplitude noise, imparted either by the amplifier or through limited amplitude resolution of arbitrary waveform generators.…”

“…With total system efficiency of , this enabled better than twofold increase in the transmission of single photons through the filter, demonstrating the potential of this approach for spectral mode matching in quantum networks, [ 126,141 ] Figure b,c. Recent progress [ 128 ] shows a compression factor of 18, as well as excellent stability at telecommunication wavelengths, see Figure 6c.…”