A characterization of quantum Kerr optical frequency combs

Abstract

Quantum Kerr optical frequency combs are generated by pumping a high-Q microresonator with a continuouswave resonant laser. Below threshold, two pump photons are symmetrically up-and down-converted as twinphotons via spontaneous four-wave mixing, thereby generating up to a hundred paired channels. These chipscale, high-dimensional and room-temperature systems are expected to play a major role in quantum engineering. However, their theoretical description is still unclear. Here, we present an explicit description of this quantum system via a frequency-bin state and its density operator, and explore the properties of the eigenkets.

Advances in quantum microcombs

“…When the external semiclassical noise is very low, the vacuum fluctuations dominate the fluctuations in each mode, and in this regime, microcombs can feature quantum entanglement of biphoton states over up to several tens of cavity modes. 9,10 For this reason, they are appealing for the purpose of quantum optical communications, computations, amongst other applications. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] However, the theoretical description of these quantum systems remains challenging because of the dissipation that couples the microcomb to its environment through intrinsic losses.…”