Interfacing transitions of different alkali atoms and telecom bands using one narrowband photon pair source

Abstract

Quantum information technology strongly relies on the coupling of optical photons with narrowband quantum systems, such as quantum dots, color centers, and atomic systems. This coupling requires matching the optical wavelength and bandwidth to the desired system, which presents a considerable problem for most available sources of quantum light. Here we demonstrate the coupling of alkali dipole transitions with a tunable source of photon pairs. Our source is based on spontaneous parametric downconversion in a triply resonant whispering gallery mode resonator. For this, we have developed novel wavelength-tuning mechanisms that allow a coarse tuning to either the cesium or rubidium wavelength, with subsequent continuous fine-tuning to the desired transition. As a demonstration of the functionality of the source, we performed a heralded single-photon measurement of the atomic decay. We present a major advance in controlling the spontaneous downconversion process, which makes our bright source of heralded single photons now compatible with a plethora of narrowband resonant systems. (C) 2015 Optical Society of Americ

Efficient microwave to optical photon conversion: an electro-optical realization

“…This would not only allow for the interfacing of microwave qubits with the optical domain, but also electro-optic cooling of the microwave mode. With even lesser requirements, the generation of entangled pairs of microwave and optical photons utilizing parametric down-conversion is possible, which has recently been shown in the optical domain in a WGM-based system [43].…”

Nonlinear and Quantum Optics with Whispering Gallery Resonators

“…In some configurations they may impart the anomalous blue shift to one polarization family, while the other experiences the normal red shift [227]. This technique has been used for fine frequency-tuning of WGM-based SPDC source [228].…”

“…Optical WGM and ring resonators with the second-order nonlinearity have been successfully used for optical frequency doubling [107,156,257,318,330,332,333,[355][356][357][358][359][360][361][362], tripling [356,363], and quadrupling [326], as well as parametric down conversion above [108,157,158,255,319,364,365] or below [112,228,366,367] the OPO threshold. Generation of optical frequency sum [320] and difference [368] also have been demonstrated.…”

Dielectric tuning and coupling of whispering gallery modes using an anisotropic prism

“…So-called dielectric tuning, in which a dielectric substrate or prism (note we shall use the terms prism and substrate interchangeably throughout this text) is brought into close proximity to a WGM resonator, has also been proposed and demonstrated as a route to continuous fine tuning [16,31]. Several numerical and approximate analytic techniques have been developed to study the properties of WGMs in the presence of local dielectric or plasmonic perturbations [32][33][34][35] and to model cavitywaveguide coupling [36][37][38][39][40].…”