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Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion from Subwavelength Nonlinear Films

Quantum Physics 2020-09-02 v1 Optics

Abstract

Miniaturised entangled photon sources are highly demanded for the development of integrated quantum photonics. Since the invention of subwavelength optical metasurfaces and their successes at replacing bulky optical components, the possibility of implementing entangled photon sources on such devices is actively investigated. Here, as a first step towards the development of quantum optical metasurfaces (QOM), we demonstrate photon pair generation via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) from subwavelength films. We achieved photon pair generation with a high coincidence-to-accidental ratio in lithium niobate and gallium phosphide nanofilms. In addition, we have measured the SPDC frequency spectrum via fibre spectroscopy, obtaining photon pairs with a spectral bandwidth of 500\;nm, limited only by the overall detection efficiency. Moreover, we have observed the vacuum field enhancement due to a Fabry-Perot resonance inside the nonlinear films. Our experiments lay the groundwork for the future development of flat SPDC sources, including QOM.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.00324,
  title  = {Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion from Subwavelength Nonlinear Films},
  author = {Tomás Santiago-Cruz and Vitaliy Sultanov and Haizhong Zhang and Leonid A. Krivitsky and Maria V. Chekhova},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.00324},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:14:02.849Z