Broadband photon pair generation from a single lithium niobate microcube
Abstract
Nonclassical light sources are highly sought after as they are an integral part of quantum communication and quantum computation devices. Typical sources rely on bulk crystals that are not compact and have limited bandwidth due to phase-matching conditions. In this work, we demonstrate the generation of photon pairs from a free-standing lithium niobate microcube at the telecommunication wavelength through the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process. The maximum photon pair generation rate obtained from a single microcube with the size of ~4 microns is ~80 Hz, resulting in an efficiency of ~1.2 GHz/Wm per unit volume, which is an order of magnitude higher than the efficiency of photon-pair generation in bulky nonlinear crystals. The microcubes are synthesized through a solvothermal method, offering the possibility for scalable devices via bottom-up assembly. Our work constitutes an important step forward in the realization of compact nonclassical light sources with broadband tunability for various applications in quantum communication, quantum computing, and quantum metrology.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2109.08489,
title = {Broadband photon pair generation from a single lithium niobate microcube},
author = {Ngoc My Hanh Duong and Gregoire Saerens and Flavia Timpu and Maria Teresa Buscaglia and Vincenzo Buscaglia and Andrea Morandi and Jolanda S. Muller and Andreas Maeder and Fabian Kaufmann and Alexander Sonltsev and Rachel Grange},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.08489},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
19 pages, 4 figures