Temporal-Spectral Multimode Photonics for Quantum Information Science

可见光是我们获取世界和宇宙信息的主要方式之一，例如使用显微镜和望远镜。光脉冲还被用来利用支持互联网、电子商务甚至国际金融市场的全球光纤网络，以前所未有的速度在全球范围内传输信息。此外，光可以用来控制材料系统，应用范围从激光眼科手术到可以捕获和操纵单个分子的光学“镊子”。这些发展中的许多都得益于产生、操纵和探测光的新方法。今天，研究人员正在开发一种方法来产生、控制和测量光的基本成分，即遵守量子物理定律的单光子(单个光“粒子”)。该项目将探索产生、操作和测量具有明确脉冲特征(颜色和时间脉冲形状)的单个光子的方法，并研究这种单光子脉冲在保密通信、增强精度测量和高容量计算等应用方面的潜力。该项目通过培训量子信息科学领域的不同本科生、研究生和博士后研究人员来支持教育，并向当地高中和大学提供服务。该项目旨在利用量子技术的潜在进步，通过对单个光子的波长和时间形状进行编码来提供信息。通过探索产生、操作和测量具有明确脉冲特征(波长和时间形状)的单光子的方法，本研究计划将研究光谱-时间单光子编码在传感和量子通信等应用中对提高性能的影响。为了解决这些目标，该项目探索了基于自发非线性光学过程的可控光谱-时间纠缠光子对的波导型光源。它研究了通过使用电光相位调制器和光纤中的工程光谱色散实现的明确的时间和光谱相位的应用来操纵单光子脉冲的方法。它还研究了通过时间和光谱剪切干涉计量学来表征单光子和双光子脉冲模式结构的方法。这种以单光子光谱-时间形状进行信息编码的平台为集成光学系统中的单光子提供了更大的信息容量。

Visible light is one of the primary ways we get information about the world and the universe, for example using microscopes and telescopes. Light pulses are also used to convey information across the globe at unprecedented rates using the world-wide fiber-optical network that supports the Internet, e-commerce, and even the international financial markets. Furthermore, light can be used to control material systems with applications ranging from laser eye surgery to optical "tweezers" that can trap and manipulate individual molecules. Many of these developments have been enabled by new methods to generate, manipulate and detect light. Today, researchers are developing means to generate, control, and measure the fundamental constituents of light, single photons (individual light "particles"), which obey the laws of quantum physics. This project will explore methods to produce, manipulate and measure individual photons with well-defined pulse characteristics (color and temporal pulse shape) and examine the potential of such single-photon pulses for applications such as secure communications, enhanced precision measurements, and high-capacity computation. The project supports education through training of a diverse group of undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral researchers in the field of quantum information science, and provides outreach to local high schools and colleges. This project aims to harness the potential advances in quantum technologies offered by encoding information in the wavelength and temporal shape of individual photons. By exploring methods to produce, manipulate and measure single photons with well-defined pulse characteristics (wavelength and temporal shape), this research program will examine the impact of spectral-temporal single-photon encoding for improved performance in applications such as sensing and quantum communication. To address these goals, the project explores wave-guided optical sources of controllable spectral-temporal entangled photon pairs based upon spontaneous nonlinear optical processes. It examines methods for manipulating single-photon pulses by application of well-defined temporal and spectral phase implemented using electro-optic phase modulators and engineered spectral dispersion in optical fibers. It also investigates methods to characterize the pulse-mode structure of one and two photons by temporal- and spectral-shearing interferometry. This platform for information encoding in the single-photon spectral-temporal shape offers increased information capacity for single photons in integrated-optical systems.