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Concept
Spontaneous parametric down-conversion
Summary
Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (also known as SPDC, parametric fluorescence or parametric scattering) is a nonlinear instant optical process that converts one photon of higher energy (namely, a pump photon), into a pair of photons (namely, a signal photon, and an idler photon) of lower energy, in accordance with the law of conservation of energy and law of conservation of momentum. It is an important process in quantum optics, for the generation of entangled photon pairs, and of single photons.
A nonlinear crystal is used to produce pairs of photons from a photon beam. In accordance with the law of conservation of energy and law of conservation of momentum, the pairs have combined energies and momenta equal to the energy and momentum of the original photon. Because the index of refraction changes with frequency (dispersion), only certain triplets of frequencies will be phase-matched so that simultaneous energy and momentum conservation can be achieved. Phase-matching is most commonly achieved using birefringent nonlinear materials, whose index of refraction changes with polarization. As a result of this, different types of SPDC are categorized by the polarizations of the input photon (the pump) and the two output photons (signal and idler). If the signal and idler photons share the same polarization with each other and with the destroyed pump photon it is deemed Type-0 SPDC; if the signal and idler photons share the same polarization to each other, but are orthogonal to the pump polarization, it is Type-I SPDC; and if the signal and idler photons have perpendicular polarizations, it is deemed Type II SPDC.
The conversion efficiency of SPDC is typically very low, with the highest efficiency obtained on the order of 4 pairs per 106 incoming photons for PPLN in waveguides. However, if one half of the pair is detected at any time then its partner is known to be present. The degenerate portion of the output of a Type I down converter is a squeezed vacuum that contains only even photon number terms.
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