Ultrabright and narrowband intra-fiber biphoton source at ultralow pump power

Abstract

Nonclassical photon sources of high brightness are key components of quantum communication technologies. We here demonstrate the generation of narrowband, nonclassical photon pairs by employing spontaneous four-wave mixing in an optically-dense ensemble of cold atoms within a hollow-core fiber. The brightness of our source approaches the limit of achievable generated spectral brightness at which successive photon pairs start to overlap in time. For a generated spectral brightness per pump power of up to $2\times 10^9\text{pairs/(s MHz mW)}$ we observe nonclassical correlations at pump powers below $100\text{nW}$ and a narrow bandwidth of $2\pi \times 6.5\text{MHz}$. In this regime we demonstrate that our source can be used as a heralded single-photon source. By further increasing the brightness we enter the regime where successive photon pairs start to overlap in time and the cross-correlation approaches a limit corresponding to thermal statistics. Our approach of combining the advantages of atomic ensembles and waveguide environments is an important step towards photonic quantum networks of ensemble based elements.

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• $N$ Scaling of Large-Sample Collective Decay in Inhomogeneous Ensembles
• Protecting Heralded Single Photons Generated from Double-$\Lambda$ Biphoton Sources with Doppler-Broadened Atomic Media
• Designing a compact cavity-enhanced source of entangled photons