Nonlinear domain engineering for quantum technologies

Abstract

The continuously growing effort toward developing real-world quantum technological applications has come to demand an increasing amount of flexibility from its respective platforms. This review presents a highly adaptable engineering technique for photonic quantum technologies based on the artificial structuring of the material nonlinearity. This technique, while, in a simple form, already featured across the full breadth of photonic quantum technologies, has undergone significant development over the last decade, now featuring advanced, aperiodic designs. This review gives an introduction to the three-wave-mixing processes lying at the core of this approach and illustrates, on basis of the underlying quantum-mechanical description, how they can artificially be manipulated to engineer the corresponding photon characteristics. It then describes how this technique can be employed to realize a number of very different objectives, which are expected to find application across the full range of photonic quantum technologies, and presents a summary of the research done toward these ends to date.