Tailored photon pair preparation relying on full group velocity matching in fibre-based spontaneous four wave mixing

TL;DR

This paper investigates fiber-based spontaneous four-wave mixing for photon pair generation, focusing on full group velocity matching to produce broadband and nearly-factorable two-photon states with minimal dispersion constraints.

Contribution

It introduces experimental techniques to achieve full group velocity matching in fiber-based four-wave mixing, enabling broadband and high-quality photon pair sources.

Findings

Full GVM leads to broadband photon pairs with large bandwidth.

Full GVM allows generation of nearly-factorable two-photon states.

Techniques for attaining full GVM in fiber-based setups are discussed.

Abstract

We study photon pair generation through scalar spontaneous four-wave mixing in single-mode fibre and for frequency-degenerate pumps; we concentrate on source geometries which fulfil full group velocity matching (GVM), i.e. where the pump, signal and idler propagate at identical group velocities. We discuss two experimental techniques which permit the attainment of full GVM, and discuss the resulting two-photon state properties. In particular, we show that full GVM can lead to sources which approach phasematching unconstrained by dispersion and therefore with a remarkably large bandwidth. We also discuss the generation of nearly-factorablestates as an application of full GVM.