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Quantum optics

Enhanced quantum light generation

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 138–140 (2010)Cite this article

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The use of a specially designed cavity to enhance the intensity of femtosecond ultraviolet pulses dramatically increases the rate at which non-classical states of light can be produced.

A number of quantum networking protocols, such as quantum teleportation and secret sharing, require the use of multiphoton entangled states of light1. Such exotic quantum states are often produced from spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in a nonlinear crystal. In this scheme, the crystal splits a single photon into multiple pairs of entangled photons of lower energy, which adhere to the laws of energy and momentum conservation. As this nonlinear process is very weak, high-power laser sources are typically required to generate detectable amounts of down-converted light. Even when using state-of-the-art femtosecond laser systems, the count rates of generated entangled states may not be high enough to realize many of the potential applications of quantum networking.

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Figure 1: UV femtosecond enhancement cavity for intracavity spontaneous parametric down-conversion.
Figure 2: Filtering of the laser spectrum occurs when the femtosecond frequency comb is not optimally aligned to the resonant modes of the cavity.

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  1. R. Jason Jones is at the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, Meinel Building, 1630 East University Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. rjjones@optics.arizona.edu,

    R. Jason Jones

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  1. R. Jason Jones
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Jones, R. Enhanced quantum light generation. Nature Photon 4, 138–140 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.13

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