From classical four-wave mixing to parametric fluorescence in silicon microring resonators

Abstract

Four-wave mixing (FWM) can be either stimulated or occur spontaneously. The first process is intrinsically much stronger and well understood through classical nonlinear optics. The latter, also known as parametric fluorescence, can be explained only in the framework of a quantum theory of light. We experimentally demonstrated that, in a microring resonator, there is a simple relation between the efficiencies of these two processes that is independent of the nonlinearity and ring size. In particular, we have shown the average power generated by parametric fluorescence can be immediately estimated from a classical FWM experiment. These results suggest that classical nonlinear characterization of a photonic integrated structure can provide accurate information on its nonlinear quantum properties.

Triply-resonant Continuous Wave Parametric Source with a Microwatt Pump

“…A maximum ratio of 14 MHz is achieved when NBF 2 is tuned on the blue side, hence we estimate the normalized count rate to be larger than 200 MHz/nm. This fairly large value of the emission rate is consistent with the fact that the ratio between spontaneous emission (photon pair generation) and stimulated emission (parametric frequency conversion) only depends on the Q-factor and the input signal power [1]. …”

“…Integrated photonic devices based on four-wave mixing (FWM) are of particular interest due to the promise of compact all-optical sources for signal processing metrology and quantum information transmission. In a resonator with a non-depleted pump the efficiency of frequency conversion due to four wave mixing (FWM) scales as Q 4 [1], provided the pump, the probe and the idler are all spectrally matched with a resonance. The generation of photon pairs by spontaneous frequency conversion is similarly enhanced [2][3][4].…”

Kerr optical frequency combs: theory, applications and perspectives

“…Spontaneous FWM, which is also sometimes referred to as parametric fluorescence, is a purely quantum phenomenon that results from the coupling between the intracavity pump photons and the vacuum fluctuations of the various sidemodes. The applications of spontaneous FWM belong to the area of quantum optics engineering, where one of the main challenge is the generation of entangled twin-photon pairs with chip-scale RRs [78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90]. These photon pairs are expected to play a key role in quantum communication protocols.…”

Spontaneous four-wave mixing in lossy microring resonators

“…In an experimental setting, loss due to scattering may significantly affect the yield and statistics of the generated photons, manifested as a nonzero probability to detect a lone signal or idler whose pair partner was lost [8,9]. We formally account for these effects by the inclusion of H bath , which would in principle accommodate modes into which ring photons can scatter.…”