Spectral compression of single photons
Spectral compression of single photons
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DOI：
10.1038/nphoton.2013.47
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发表时间：
2013-05-01
期刊：
影响因子：
35
通讯作者：
Resch, K. J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lavoie, J.;Donohue, J. M.;Resch, K. J.
光子对量子技术至关重要，因为它们几乎可以用于所有量子信息任务，例如量子计量学（1），作为光子量子计算中的信息载体（2,3），作为混合系统中的介体（4 ），并建立长距离网络（5）。这些应用中光子的物理特征差异很大。对于某些量子记忆，光谱带宽从50 THz（参考文献6）到12个数量级（参考文献6）至50 Hz（8）。结合这些技术需要连贯的界面，这些接口可逆地绘制中心频率和光子的带宽，以避免过度损失。在这里，我们在70倍的范围内通过刺耳的激光脉冲来证明单个光子的带宽压缩40倍和可调性。这构成了能够将时间键转换为彩色纠缠（9）的光的频率接口（9），并启用了超快的时间测量。这是迈向单个和纠缠光子的任意波形生成（10）的一步。
Photons are critical to quantum technologies because they can be used for virtually all quantum information tasks, for example, in quantum metrology(1), as the information carrier in photonic quantum computation(2,3), as a mediator in hybrid systems(4), and to establish long-distance networks(5). The physical characteristics of photons in these applications differ drastically; spectral bandwidths span 12 orders of magnitude from 50 THz (ref. 6) for quantum-optical coherence tomography(7) to 50 Hz for certain quantum memories(8). Combining these technologies requires coherent interfaces that reversibly map centre frequencies and bandwidths of photons to avoid excessive loss. Here, we demonstrate bandwidth compression of single photons by a factor of 40 as well as tunability over a range 70 times that bandwidth via sum-frequency generation with chirped laser pulses. This constitutes a time-to-frequency interface for light capable of converting time-bin to colour entanglement(9), and enables ultrafast timing measurements. It is a step towards arbitrary waveform generation(10) for single and entangled photons.