Single-Photon Photonics

The major challenge today is to scale up optical quantum systems to large dimensions, with direct applications in quantum communications and quantum cryptography. Harnessing the large nonlinearity obtainable in photonics structure (optical fibers and SiN structures), our group studies novel ways to generate, manipulate and detect quantum states, with a focus on exploiting the frequency degree of freedom, that can lead to large dimensionality with a reduced system complexity.

Current main focus is on Bragg Scattering Four-Wave Mixing (BS-FWM), a x(3) process where two strong pumps drive the interaction between a signal and an idler field. Our group demonstrated BS-FWM to frequency-translate, with high efficiency and ultralow noise, a single photon from 1280 nm to 1285 nm. This setup is the foundation for a plethora of frequency manipulation experiments at the single photon level, ranging from temporal lens to chromatic qubits manipulation to deterministic single photon source via frequency multiplexing.

FWM-BS energy scheme and phasematching scheme

Our group demonstrated efficient generation of photon pairs from high-quality SiN microrings, with enhanced emission in well defined frequency bins.

Our group is also studying Coherent Photon Conversion, an induced nonlinear process that could enable deterministic single photon nonlinearity.