Counting of Hong-Ou-Mandel Bunched Optical Photons Using a Fast Pixel Camera

Abstract

The uses of a silicon-pixel camera with very good time resolution (∼nanosecond) for detecting multiple, bunched optical photons is explored. We present characteristics of the camera and describe experiments proving its counting capabilities. We use a spontaneous parametric down-conversion source to generate correlated photon pairs, and exploit the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference effect in a fiber-coupled beam splitter to bunch the pair onto the same output fiber. It is shown that the time and spatial resolution of the camera enables independent detection of two photons emerging simultaneously from a single spatial mode.

High Speed Imaging of Spectral-Temporal Correlations in Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference

“…Fig. 4 It is also possible to observe photon bunching events in HOM from the same data set by looking for coincidences in the spectrum of the same beam instead of between the two beams [18,30]. However, due to the requirement to correct for clustering of events caused by the image intensifier, as discussed in the previous section, coincidence events that occur approximately in a 10 pixel radius around the degenerate wavelength of 811 nm will all be regrouped into a single event.…”

“…Here we use a two-photon spectrometer based on a novel photon-counting camera [16][17][18] to spectrally resolve the HOM effect with high spectro-temporal resolution. Each output port of the beasmplitter (BS) is spectrally binned into 256 pixels and coincident detection is performed in all 256 × 256 = 65536 joint spectral modes simultaneously as the arrival time between the photons is scanned.…”

Novel imaging technique for α-particles using a fast optical camera

“…The MCP in the intensifier has an improved detection efficiency close to 100%. Similar configurations of the intensified Tpx3Cam were used before for characterization of quantum networks [18,19], quantum target detection [20,21], single photon counting [22] and lifetime imaging [23] studies.…”

Two-tone Doppler cooling of radial two-dimensional crystals in a radiofrequency ion trap

“…We also use a timedigital-converter (TDC) with 260 ps time resolution, built-in to the camera, to time-stamp pulses that are synchronized with Ω in order to observe micromotion [31]. The same camera has been used before for studies of ion crystals [32], single photon counting [33,34] and quantum optics experiments where simultaneous imaging and time-stamping of multiple single photons is required [35,36].…”