Arbitrary-phase locking of fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometers

Abstract

Optical interferometers are extensively used in fundamental physics test, gravitational wave detection, quantum metrology, topological photonics, and quantum information processing. Fiber-based interferometers are compact, robust and cheap, thus are ubiquitously deployed. However, the optical phase in fiber interferometers is sensitive to ambient perturbation, resulting in compromised phase sensing precision. Therefore, phase control, shifting and stabilization of fiber interferometers is essential. Methods to create stable interference patterns and to lock a fiber interferometer at arbitrary phase have been shown, which however are sophisticated, bulky and delicate, preventing wider application in harsh environment outside laboratories or in space. Here we demonstrate a new method for arbitrary-phase locking of fiber unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers. Compared to existing method, our method is simpler, more robust and more compact. We showcase the preparation and characterization of narrow-band energy-time-entanglement photon state generated in integrated nonlinear microresonators, where two-photon interference visibility reaching 0.993(6) is enabled. Our method constitutes a critical building block for photonic quantum network, and is useful to emerging single-photon interference in curved space-time that facilitates exploration of the interface of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

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