Engineering the spectra of photon triplets generated from micro/nanofiber

Abstract

Quantum light sources are the core resources for photonics-based quantum information processing. We investigate the spectral engineering of photon triplets generated by third-order spontaneous parametric down-conversion in micro/nanofiber. The phase mismatching at one-third pump frequency gives rise to non-degenerate photon triplets, the joint spectral intensity of which has an elliptical locus with a fixed eccentricity of $\frac{\sqrt{6}}{3}$. Therefore, we propose a frequency-division scheme to separate non-degenerate photon triplets into three channels with high heralding efficiency for the first time. Choosing an appropriate pump wavelength can compensate for the fabrication errors of micro/nanofiber and also generate narrowband, non-degenerate photon triplet sources with high signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, the long-period micro/nanofiber grating introduces a new controllable degree of freedom to tailor phase matching, resulting from the periodic oscillation of dispersion. In this scheme, the wavelength of photon triplets can be flexibly tuned using quasi-phase matching. We study the generation of photon triplets from this novel perspective of spectrum engineering, and we believe that this work will accelerate the practical implementation of photon triplets in quantum information processing.