Multicolor multipartite entanglement produced by vector four-wave mixing in a fiber

Enhanced-contrast optical readout in ultrafast broadband Raman quantum memories

The signal-to-noise contrast of the optical readout in broadband Raman quantum memories is analyzed as a function of the pulse widths and phase properties of tailored optical field waveforms used to write in and read out broadband photon wave packets. Based on this analysis, we quantify the tradeoff between the readout contrast and the speed of such memories. Off-resonance coherent four-wave mixing is shown to provide a source of noise photons, lowering the readout contrast in broadband Raman quantum memories. This noise cannot be suppressed by phase matching, but can be radically reduced with a suitable polarization arrangement and proper field-waveform tailoring.

Phase matching as a gate for photon entanglement

Phase matching is shown to provide a tunable gate that helps discriminate entangled states of light generated by four-wave mixing (FWM) in optical fibers against uncorrelated photons originating from Raman scattering. Two types of such gates are discussed. Phase-matching gates of the first type are possible in the normal dispersion regime, where FWM sidebands can be widely tuned by high-order dispersion management, enhancing the ratio of the entangled-photon output to the Raman noise. The photon-entanglement gates of the second type are created by dual-pump cross-phase-modulation-induced FWM sideband generation and can be tuned by group-velocity mismatch of the pump fields.

Complete temporal mode analysis in pulse-pumped fiber-optical parametric amplifier for continuous variable entanglement generation

Mode matching plays an important role in measuring the continuous variable entanglement. For the signal and idler twin beams generated by a pulse pumped fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA), the spatial mode matching is automatically achieved in single mode fiber, but the temporal mode property is complicated because it is highly sensitive to the dispersion and the gain of the FOPA. We study the temporal mode structure and derive the input-output relation for each temporal mode of signal and idler beams after decomposing the joint spectral function of twin beams with the singular-value decomposition method. We analyze the measurement of the quadrature-amplitude entanglement, and find mode matching between the multi-mode twin beams and the local oscillators of homodyne detection systems is crucial to achieve a high degree of entanglement. The results show that the noise contributed by the temporal modes nonorthogonal to local oscillator may be much larger than the vacuum noise, so the mode mis-match can not be accounted for by merely introducing an effective loss. Our study will be useful for developing a source of high quality continuous variable entanglement by using the FOPA.

Noise performance of phase-insensitive frequency multicasting in parametric mixer with finite dispersion

Noise performance of dual-pump, multi-sideband parametric mixer operated in phase-insensitive mode is investigated theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that, in case when a large number of multicasting idlers are generated, the noise performance is strictly dictated by the dispersion characteristics of the mixer. We find that the sideband noise performance is significantly degraded in anomalous dispersion region permitting nonlinear noise amplification. In contrast, in normal dispersion region, the noise performance converges to the level of four-sideband parametric process, rather than deteriorates with increased sideband creation. Low noise generation mandates precise dispersion-induced phase mismatch among pump and sideband waves in order to control the noise coupling. We measure the noise performance improvement for a many-sideband, multi-stage mixer by incorporating new design technique.

Broadband parametric multicasting via four-mode phase-sensitive interaction

Optical frequency multicasting with significantly enhanced signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) is demonstrated over wide wavelength range. High-fidelity multicasting relies on a four-mode phase-sensitive (PS) parametric process. Four-mode seeding was used to drive dual-pump, multistage mixer and achieve high-efficiency frequency comb generation and signal replication assisted by field interference. New PS mixer was measured to possess near 12-dB of spectrally uniform optical SNR advantage over conventional, phase-insensitive (PI) parametric multicaster. In signal attenuation regime, PS operation was measured with better than 10dB over the entire mixer band, indicating highly controllable PS interference. The role of the new PS mixer in near-noiseless signal replication is elaborated.