We present a scheme for engineering the joint spectrum of photon pairs created via spontaneous parametric down conversion. Our method relies on customizing the poling configuration of a quasi-phase-matched crystal. We use simulated annealing to find an optimized poling configuration which allows almost arbitrary shaping of the crystal's phase-matching function. This has direct application in the creation of pure single photons---currently one of the most important goals of single-photon quantum optics. We describe the general algorithm and provide code, written in C++, that outputs an optimized poling configuration given specific experimental parameters.
@article{arxiv.1410.7714,
title = {Shaping the joint spectrum of down-converted photons through optimized custom poling},
author = {Annamaria Dosseva and Lukasz Cincio and Agata M. Branczyk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.7714},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Manuscript rewritten for clarity. Submission updated to match published version. C++ code is supplied in the ancillary files to this submission and can also be obtained from http://www.agatabranczyk.com/Dosseva2015code.zip