Generation and detection of polarization entanglement at 2.1 micron

Shields, Taylor, Dada, Adetunmise, Prabhakar, Shashi, Ebrahim, Mehdi, Taylor, Gregor, Taylor, Gregor, Morozov, Dmitry, Erotokritou, Kleanthis, Miki, Shigehito, Yabuno, Masahiro, Terai, Hirotaka, Gawith, Corin, Kues, Michael, Caspani, Lucia, Hadfield, Robert and Clerici, Matteo (2020) Generation and detection of polarization entanglement at 2.1 micron. In QTECH2020.

Abstract

Quantum-enhanced optical systems operating within the 2-2.5 µm spectral region have the potential to revolutionize emerging applications in communications, sensing and metrology. However, until now, sources of entangled photons have been realized mainly in the near-infrared 700-1550 nm spectral window. Above 2 µm lies an atmospheric transparency window with nearly one-third of the solar blackbody radiation as what is typical at telecom wavelengths. There is, therefore, a growing interest to deliver sources and detectors operating in this wavelength range for free-space optical communications and in emerging fields of high-sensitivity metrology, specifically, gravitational wave detection [1,2]. Here, using a 130 fs pulsed laser at wavelength 1.05 μm to pump custom-designed non-linear crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process and tailored superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD), we demonstrate for the first-time two-photon quantum interference and polarization entanglement in the mid-infrared, at ≃ 2.1 μm.

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Contributors

Author: Corin Gawith

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