Lock-in detection of single photons after two-step frequency conversion

Opt Lett. 2012 Oct 15;37(20):4254-6. doi: 10.1364/OL.37.004254.

Abstract

We report on cascaded frequency conversion at the single-photon level, consisting of a downconversion from the red (738 nm) to a telecom band (1403 nm) and the reverse upconversion process in the same nonlinear crystal. Detecting the converted single photons suffers from a large noise floor. We were able to recover the signal by implementing a lock-in analyzer technique in the data postprocessing.