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A 1632-nm laser has highly important applications in interfacing the wavelength of rubidium-based quantum memories (795 nm) and the telecom band (typically 1550 nm) by frequency conversion in three-wave mixing processes. A 1632-nm laser source based on pump-enhanced difference frequency generation is demonstrated. It has 300 mW of output power, in agreement with simulations, and a 55% quantum efficiency. An average power fluctuation of 0.51% over one hour was observed, and 200-kHz linewidth was measured using a delayed self-heterodyne method., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Journal of the Optical Society of America B

The infrared imaging detection is an important and promising technology having wide applications. In this work, we report on the frequency up-conversion detection of an image based on sum frequency generation in a nonlinear crystal with a flat-top beam acting as the pump instead of a Gaussian beam, the up-converted image at 525 nm falls in the sensitive band of visible detectors and human eyes. Both theoretical simulations and the experimental results clearly demonstrate that using a flat-top beam as a pump can improve the fidelity of an image after the up-conversion compared with a Gaussian pump beam. Our scheme will be very promising for infrared image detection based on frequency up-conversion., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Optics Communications

A high-quality, compact, and narrow-bandwidth entangled photon source (EPS) is indispensable for realization of many quantum communication protocols. Usually, a free space cavity containing a nonlinear crystal is used to generate a narrow bandwidth EPS through spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). One major drawback is that this occupies a large space and requires complex optical and electrical control systems. Here we present a simple and compact method to generate a single-longitudinal-mode time-energy EPS via type II SPDC in a submillimeter Fabry-Perot cavity. We characterize the quality of the EPS by measuring the coincidence to accidental coincidence ratio, the two-photon time cross-correlation function and the two-photon interference fringes. All measured results clearly demonstrate that the developed source is of high quality when compared with EPSs generated using other configurations. We believe this source is very promising for applications in the quantum communication field., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures,submitted to PRL, comments are welcome

Vector beams (VBs) are widely investigated for its special intensity and polarization distributions, which is useful for optical micromanipulation, optical micro-fabrication, optical communication, and single molecule imaging. To date, it is still a challenge to realize nonlinear frequency conversion (NFC) and manipulation of such VBs because of the polarization sensitivity in most of nonlinear processes. Here, we report an experimental realization of NFC and manipulation of VBs which can be used to expand the available frequency band. The main idea of our scheme is to introduce a Sagnac loop to solve the polarization dependence of NFC in nonlinear crystals. Furthermore, we find that a linearly polarized vector beam should be transformed to an exponential form before performing the NFC. The experimental results are well agree with our theoretical model. The present method is also applicable to other wave bands and second order nonlinear processes, and may also be generalized to the quantum regime for single photons., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Light with orbital angular momentum (OAM), or twisted light, is widely investigated in the fields of optical communications, quantum information science and nonlinear optics by harnessing its unbounded dimension. For light-matter interacting with twisted light like quantum memory and nonlinear frequency conversion, efficiencies in these processes are usually decreasing exponentially with topological charges, which severely degrades the fidelity of the output states. Here we conceive and develop a method to eliminate the dependence of conversion efficiency on topological charges in second harmonic generation (SHG) process by utilizing a special designed image technique. The independence of SHG conversion efficiency on topological charge is verified for different topological charges, this independence is valid for various pump power. This method can be generalized to other light matter interaction processes and will revolute the field of light matter interaction with twisted light to achieve higher efficiency and higher fidelity., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, comments are welcome

Spiral phase contrast is an important and convenient imaging processing technology in edge detection, and a broader field-of-view (FOV) of imaging is a long-pursuing aim to see more regions of the illumination objects. Compared with near-infrared (NIR) spectrum, the up-conversion imaging in visible spectrum benefits from the advantages of higher efficiency detection and lower potential speckle. FOV enhanced and spiral phase contrast up-conversion imaging processing methods by using second order nonlinear frequency up-conversion from NIR spectrum to visible spectrum in two different configurations are presented in this work. By changing the temperature of crystal, controllable spatial patterns of imaging with more than 4.5 times enhancement of FOV is realized in both configurations. Additionally, we present numerical simulations of the phenomenon, which agree well with the experimental observations. Our results provide a very promising way in imaging processing, which may be widely used in biomedicine, remote sensing and up-conversion monitoring., Comment: 11 pages,5 figures,22 references

Maximally entangled photon pairs with a spatial degree of freedom is a potential way for realizing high-capacity quantum computing and communication. However, methods to generate such entangled states with high quality, high brightness, and good controllability are needed. Here, a scheme is experimentally demonstrated that generates spatially maximally entangled photon pairs with an orbital angular momentum degree of freedom via spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a nonlinear crystal. Compared with existing methods using post-selection, the technique can directly modulate the spatial spectrum of down-converted photon pairs by engineering the input pump beam. In addition, the relative phase between spatially entangled photon pairs can be easily manipulated by preparing the relative phase of input pump states., Comment: 8 pages and 5 figures

Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) is one of the most successful methods for enhancing data transmission rates in both classical and quantum communication networks. Although signal multiplexing and demultiplexing are equally important, traditional multiplexing and demultiplexing methods are based on passive devices such as arrayed waveguides and fiber Bragg cascade filters, which, although widely used in commercial devices, lack any active tuning ability. In this work, we propose a signal demultiplexing method based on sum frequency generation (SFG) with two significant features: first, any signal from the common communication channel can be demultiplexed to a single user by switching the pump wavelength; second, a cheap high-performance detector can be used for signal detection. These two features were demonstrated by demultiplexing multi-channel energy-time entanglement generated by a micro-cavity silicon chip. High interference visibilities over three channels after demultiplexing showed that entanglement was preserved and verified the high performance of the demultiplexer, which will find wide application in high-capacity quantum communication networks., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, comments welcome

The interferometer is one of the most important devices for revealing the nature of light and for precision optical metrology. Though lots of experiments were performed for probing photons behaviors in various configurations, a complete study of photons behavior in a birefringent interferometer has not ever been performed. Based on an environmental turbulence immune Mach-Zehnder interferometer, tunable photonic beatings by rotating a birefringent crystal versus the temperature of the crystal for both single-photon and two-photon are observed. Furthermore, the two-photon interference fringes beat two times faster than the single-photon interference fringes. This beating effect is used to determine the thermal dispersion coefficients of the two principal refractive axes with a single measurement, the two-photon interference shows super-resolution and high sensitivity. Obvious differences between two-photon and single photon interference are also revealed in an unbalanced situations. In addition, influences of the photon bandwidth to the beating behaviors that come from polarization-dependent decoherence are also investigated. Our findings will be important for better understanding the behavior of two-photon interference in a birefringent interferometer and for precision optical metrology with quantum enhancement., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. accepted in PRL

Guided-wave platforms such as fiber and silicon-on-insulator waveguide show great advances over traditional free space implementations in quantum information technology for significant advantages of low transmission loss, low cost, integrability and compatible with mature fiber communication systems. Interference between independent photon sources is the key to realize complex quantum systems for more sophisticated applications such as multi-photon entanglement generation and quantum teleportation. In this work, we report Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between two independent all fiber photon pair sources over two 100GHz dense wave division multiplexing channels, the visibility reaches 53.2(8.4)% (82.9(5.3)%) without (with) back ground counts subtracted. In addition, we give a general theoretical description of the purity of the photon pair generation in dispersion shifted fiber and obtain the optimized condition for high purity photon pair generation. We also obtain a maximum coincidence to back ground ratio of 131 by cooling the fiber in liquid nitrogen. Our study shows great promising of integrated optical elements for future scalable quantum information promising., Comment: Primary draft, comments are welcome

The ultimate goal of quantum information science is to build a global quantum network, which enables quantum resources to be distributed and shared between remote parties. Such quantum network can be realized by all fiber elements, which takes advantage of low transmission loss,low cost, scalable and mutual fiber communication techniques such as dense wavelength division multiplexing. Therefore high quality entangled photon sources based on fibers are on demanding for building up such kind of quantum network. Here we report multiplexed polarization and timebin entanglement photon sources based on dispersion shifted fiber operating at room temperature. High qualities of entanglement are characterized by using interference, Bell inequality and quantum state tomography. Simultaneous presence of entanglements in multichannel pairs of a 100GHz DWDM shows the great capacity for entanglements distribution over multi-users. Our research provides a versatile platform and moves a first step toward constructing an all fiber quantum network.

We give a characterizaion of Gorenstein toric Fano $n$-folds with index $n-1$, which is called Gorenstein toric Del Pezzo $n$-folds, among toric varieties. In practice, we obtain a condition for a lattice $n$-polytope to be a Gorenstein Fano polytope. In our proof, we do not use Batyrev-Juny's classification of Gorenstein Fano polytopes., Comment: 10 pages

We give a characterization of Gorenstein toric Fano varieties of dimension $n$ with index $n$ among toric varieties. As an application, we give a strong version of Fujita's freeness conjecture and also give a simple proof of Fujita's very ampleness conjecture on Gorenstein toric varieties., Comment: 18 pages