Superspontaneous Four-Wave Mixing in an Array of Silicon Microresonators

Abstract

Composite optical systems can show compelling collective dynamics. For instance, the cooperative decay of quantum emitters into a common radiation mode can lead to superradiance, where the emission rate of the ensemble is larger than the sum of the rates of the individual emitters. Here, we report experimental evidence of super spontaneous four-wave mixing (super SFWM), an analogous effect for the generation of photon pairs in a parametric nonlinear process on an integrated photonic device. We study this phenomenon in an array of microring resonators on a silicon photonic chip coupled to bus waveguides. We measured a cooperative pair generation rate that always exceeds the incoherent sum of the rates of the individual resonators. We investigate the physical mechanisms underlying this collective behaviour, clarify the impact of loss, and address the aspects of fundamental and technological relevance of our results.

Ultra-efficient generation of time-energy entangled photon pairs in a InGaP Photonic Crystal Cavity

“…Different routes have been explored in this regard, for example the emission of defects in diamonds or semiconductors [8][9][10] , artificial solid state quantum emitters such as quantum dots [11][12][13] , and parametric processes exploiting intrinsic material nonlinearity. Correlated photon pairs spontaneously generated via parametric processes can be used to build heralded SPSs [14][15][16][17][18] , in which the detection of one photon in one input channel heralds the presence of its twin photon in the other. Such processes can provide highly coherent entangled states but, relying on spontaneous processes, the pair emission is random and the source is probabilistic, making it crucial to achieve the highest generation efficiency.…”

Ultra-efficient generation of time-energy entangled photon pairs in an InGaP photonic crystal cavity

“…Different routes have been explored in this regard, for example, the emission of defects in diamonds or semiconductors [8][9][10] , artificial solid-state quantum emitters such as quantum dots [11][12][13] , and parametric processes exploiting intrinsic material nonlinearity. Correlated photon pairs spontaneously generated via parametric processes can be used to build heralded SPSs [14][15][16][17][18] , in which the detection of one photon in one input channel heralds the presence of its twin photon in the other. Such processes can provide highly coherent entangled states but, relying on spontaneous processes, the pair emission is random and the source is probabilistic, making it crucial to achieve the highest generation efficiency.…”