Pump depletion in parametric down-conversion with low pump energies

2020/03/31 by Jefferson Flórez, Jeff S. Lundeen, Maria V. Chekhova · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #Beam (structure) #Energy conversion efficiency #Laser #Laser pumping #Lithium niobate #Materials science #Nonlinear optics #Optical pumping #Optics #Optoelectronics #Parametric statistics #Photonic and Optical Devices #Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics #Physics #Power (physics) #Quantum #Quantum optics #Spontaneous parametric down-conversion #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1364/ol.394925

5 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2020/04/20 · openalex publication_date 2020/07/02 · arxiv updated 2020/08/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We report the efficient generation of high-gain parametric down-conversion, including pump depletion, with pump powers as low as 100 µW (energies 0.1 µJ/pulse) and conversion efficiencies up to 33%. In our simple configuration, the pump beam is tightly focused into a bulk periodically poled lithium niobate crystal placed in free space. We also observe a change in the photon number statistics for both the pump and down-converted beams as the pump power increases to reach the depleted pump regime. The experimental results are a clear signature of the interplay between the pump and the down-converted beams in highly efficient parametric down-conversion sources.

Citations

• Detection of multimode spatial correlation in PDC and application to the absolute calibration of a CCD camera
• The trilinear Hamiltonian: a zero-dimensional model of Hawking radiation from a quantized source
• Coherence properties of high-gain twin beams
• Real applications of quantum imaging

Cited by

• Quantum spatial dynamics of high-gain parametric down-conversion accompanied by cascaded up-conversion
• Gaussian states in quantum field theory: Exact representations of relative phase in superpositions of Gaussian states