Complete conversion between one and two photons in nonlinear waveguides with tailored dispersion

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical method to achieve complete and efficient conversion between single photons and photon pairs in nonlinear waveguides by engineering their dispersion properties, enabling robust quantum frequency conversion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dispersion engineering approach to control and optimize coherent photon conversion in nonlinear waveguides, achieving deterministic conversion and revival.

Findings

Complete deterministic photon conversion is achievable.

High conversion efficiencies are robust over long distances.

Dispersion tailoring enables optimized quantum frequency mixing.

Abstract

High-efficiency photon-pair production is a long-sought-after goal for many optical quantum technologies, and coherent photon conversion processes are promising candidates for achieving this. We show theoretically how to control coherent conversion between a narrow-band pump photon and broadband photon pairs in nonlinear optical waveguides by tailoring frequency dispersion for broadband quantum frequency mixing. We reveal that complete deterministic conversion as well as pump-photon revival can be achieved at a finite propagation distance. We also find that high conversion efficiencies can be realised robustly over long propagation distances. These results demonstrate that dispersion engineering is a promising way to tune and optimise the coherent photon conversion process.