Quantum frequency conversion (QFC) of photonic signals preserves quantum information while simultaneously changing the signal wavelength. A common application of QFC is to translate the wavelength of a signal compatible with the current fiber-optic infrastructure to a shorter wavelength more compatible with high-quality single-photon detectors and optical memories. Recent work has investigated the use of QFC to manipulate and measure specific temporal modes (TMs) through tailoring the pump pulses. Such a scheme holds promise for multidimensional quantum state manipulation that is both low loss and re-programmable on a fast time scale. We demonstrate the first QFC temporal mode sorting system in a four-dimensional Hilbert space, achieving a conversion efficiency and mode separability as high as 92% and 0.84, respectively. A 20-GHz pulse train is projected onto 6 different TMs, including superposition states, and mode separability with weak coherent signals is verified via photon counting. Such ultrafast high-dimensional photonic signals could enable long-distance quantum communication at high rates.

Last modified

• 05/08/2017

Creator

• Paritosh Manurkar
• Nitin Jain
• Martin M. Fejer
• Prem Kumar
• Yu-ping Huang
• Gregory S. Kanter
• Carsten Langrock
• Michael Silver

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2TN3N

Publisher

• Optical Society of America

Alternate Identifier

• https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.3.001300

Keyword

• quantum communications
• nonlinear optics
• parametric processes
• pulse shaping

Date created

• 2016-11-08

Related url

•  https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-3-12-1300

Resource type

• Article

Source

• Optica

License

• Attribution 3.0 United States