High-spectral-purity photon generation from a dual-interferometer-coupled silicon microring

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a high-spectral-purity photon source by designing a dual-Mach–Zehnder-interferometer-coupled silicon ring resonator, wherein the linewidths of pump and signal (idler) resonances can be engineered independently. A high spectral purity of 95 % ± 1.5 % is obtained via a time-integrated g ( 2 ) correlation measurement, which exceeds the theoretical 93% bound of a traditional ring’s spontaneous four-wave-mixing photon source. This source also possesses high performance in other metrics including a measured coincidence of 9599 pairs/s and a preparation heralding efficiency of 52.4% at a relatively low pump power of 61 µW as well as high drop-to-through suppression of 20.2 dB. By overcoming the trade-off between spectral purity and brightness in the post-filtering way, such a method guarantees bright pure photons and will pave the way for development of on-chip quantum information processing with improved operation fidelity and efficiency.

Advances in Silicon Quantum Photonics

“…(c) Asymetric MZI coupling provides tuning of the signal and idler Q factors with respect to the pump [195]. A JSA of spectral purity of 0.95 was measured using this structure by a stimulated FWM measurement [196]. (d) A MZI-coupled ring resonator.…”

“…In this technique, the pump resonance linewidth is broadended (lowering the associated quality factor) with respect to the signal and idler resonances. Recently this scheme was experimentally investigated, with purities of up to 0.95 and a heralding efficiency of 52% [196], and subsequently implemented on a silicon device generating and manipulating entanglement of two photonic qutrits [203]. Another approach is to use a split-pulse scheme manipulate the light dynamics inside the ring [197].…”

Quantum entanglement on photonic chips: a review

“…63 The second is to use a dual-MZI-coupled microring resonator to independently control the linewidths of the pump and signal (idler) photons working at different coupling points, 61 and a purity of 0.95 was experimentally obtained. 64 A similar scheme has also been experimentally investigated. 65 4 Generation, Manipulation, and…”

Suppression of Parasitic Nonlinear Processes in Spontaneous Four-Wave Mixing with Linearly Uncoupled Resonators

“…There has been a recent focus on the use of CMOS compatible materials, such as silicon and silicon nitride, which are characterized by a strong third-order optical response that can be further enhanced by the light confinement attainable in integrated microresonators [1]. With the fabrication quality and technological maturity achieved in the last decade, integrated devices based on these materials offer the promise of efficient generation of entangled photons [2][3][4][5][6], heralded single-photons [7,8] and squeezed light [9,10].…”