Quantum Processing via Four-Wave Mixing

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Understanding how light interacts with atoms and materials at the microscopic, or quantum, level is essential for developing current and future technologies. This will lead to advances in telecommunications, smaller and more sensitive detectors, precision measurements, and applications of quantum information. This project will develop methods for quantum information processing using linear and nonlinear optics. Manufacturing and controlling bright, deterministic, and efficient photon sources that can perform quantum logic operations and store quantum information with high fidelity are some of the major goals for this field. Realizing these goals and a network of such devices will require fundamental developments and new ways to control interactions between light and matter at the quantum level. In particular, nonlinear optics is at the heart of many of the quantum information devices and systems. For example, correlated light beams can be generated either through second- or third-order nonlinear optical processes in which one or two pump photons, respectively, are annihilated to create a correlated "signal" and "idler" photons. By utilizing these parametric processes in different configurations, it is also possible to create quantum frequency converters that are able to change the frequency of a signal field without changing its quantum state. The goal of this program is to utilize this quantum frequency conversion process performed in optical fibers and atomic vapors to achieve various critical functionalities including generating a specified number of photons on demand and exploring a form of quantum computation known as Boson sampling. This project will contribute to the development of quantum technologies and train students for careers in this field.In this proposal, parametric four-wave mixing will be exploited to explore new phenomena and regimes in quantum optics. Specifically, this work will explore quantum processing in the frequency domain, which offers a number of critical advantages over spatial- and time-domain implementations. The very high nonlinearities in photonic band-gap fibers will be used to greatly improve the efficiency of coherent photon conversion and to perform quantum frequency translation from the telecom regime to the visible. In addition, the near-unity efficiency, low-noise quantum frequency converter previously demonstrated in the principal investigator's group will be exploited to investigate temporal quantum correlations in the femtosecond regime, to perform frequency-domain Boson sampling, and to develop a quasi-deterministic single-photon source via frequency multiplexing.