Spectral broadening and shaping of nanosecond pulses: Toward shaping of single photons from quantum emitters

Agha, I., Ates, S., Sapienza, L. and Srinivasan, K. (2014) Spectral broadening and shaping of nanosecond pulses: Toward shaping of single photons from quantum emitters. Optics Letters, 39(19), pp. 5677-5680. (doi: 10.1364/OL.39.005677)

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate spectral broadening and shaping of exponentially-decaying nanosecond pulses via nonlinear mixing with a phase-modulated pump in a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide. 1550 nm pump light is imprinted with a temporal phase and used to upconvert a weak 980 nm pulse to 600 nm while simultaneously broadening the spectrum to that of a Lorentzian pulse up to 10 times shorter. While the current experimental demonstration is for spectral shaping, we also provide a numerical study showing the feasibility of subsequent spectral phase correction to achieve temporal compression and reshaping of a 1 ns mono-exponentially decaying pulse to a 250 ps Lorentzian, which would constitute a complete spectrotemporal waveform shaping protocol. This method, which uses quantum frequency conversion in PPLN with > 100 ∶ 1 signal-to-noise ratio, is compatible with single photon states of light.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sapienza, Dr Luca
• Authors: Agha, I., Ates, S., Sapienza, L., and Srinivasan, K.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Journal Name: Optics Letters
• Publisher: Optica
• ISSN: 0146-9592
• ISSN (Online): 1539-4794