General and complete description of temporal photon correlations in cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for predicting the spectral and temporal correlations of photons generated in cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion, validated by high-resolution experimental measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a complete theoretical model for temporal photon correlations in cavity-enhanced SPDC, aligning closely with experimental data and enabling detailed analysis of multi-photon functions.

Findings

The theory accurately predicts measured temporal correlations.

Experimental validation confirms the model's precision.

Enhanced understanding of multi-photon correlation functions.

Abstract

Heralded single photon sources are the most commonly used sources for optical quantum technology applications. There is strong demand for accurate prediction of their spectral features and temporal correlations with ever increasing precision. This is particularly important in connection with the intrinsically stochastic photon-pair generation process in heralded sources. Here we present a complete theoretical description of the temporal correlation of a signal-idler, signal-signal and signal-signal-idler coincidences of photons generated by continuous wave pumped cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The theory excellently predicts the measurements, which has been experimentally confirmed in our setup utilizing single photon detectors with high temporal resolution. This enables us to resolve and analyze the multi-photon correlation functions in great detail.