Spectrally Resolved Higher Order Photon Statistics of Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion

TL;DR

This study investigates how photon statistics in SPDC vary with wavelength, pump power, and detection bandwidth, revealing wavelength-dependent efficiency and thermal-like photon distributions.

Contribution

It introduces spectrally resolved photon statistics analysis of SPDC using a four-detector setup, highlighting wavelength-dependent behaviors and thermal photon statistics characterization.

Findings

Photon numbers increase asymmetrically with pump power around degenerate wavelength.

Shorter wavelengths show nonlinear increase with pump power, longer wavelengths are more linear.

Photon statistics follow a Negative Binomial Distribution, characteristic of thermal light.

Abstract

The photon statistics of Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion (SPDC) exhibit dependencies on wavelength, pump power, and coincidence time. Notably, the average photon numbers were found to asymmetrically increase with increasing pump power around the degenerate wavelength of emission. By the coupling of the detection scheme to a spectrometer, studying different bandwidths within the emission revealed that shorter wavelengths increased nonlinearly with pump power, while longer wavelengths showed more linear behavior, indicating a wavelength dependent efficiency in the generation of the SPDC. We employ the use of a four detector Hanbury Brown and Twiss Interferometer to study the photon statistics of the signal beam, where the idler serves as the herald. The measured statistics were found to be best described by a Negative Binomial Distribution, which is a characteristic of thermal light sources. The detection and characterization of complex light sources has wide ranging applications in the fields of quantum metrology, quantum communications, and quantum computing, more specifically, a system that is sensitive to wavelength and photon number distribution.