Synthetic five-wave mixing in an integrated microcavity for visible-telecom entanglement generation

Jia-Qi Wang; Yuan-Hao Yang; Ming Li; Haiqi Zhou; Xin-Biao Xu; Ji-Zhe Zhang; Chun-Hua Dong; Guang-Can Guo; C-L Zou

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-33914-5

Synthetic five-wave mixing in an integrated microcavity for visible-telecom entanglement generation

Nat Commun. 2022 Oct 20;13(1):6223. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-33914-5.

Authors

Jia-Qi Wang^#^{1

2}, Yuan-Hao Yang^#^{1

2}, Ming Li^{3

4}, Haiqi Zhou^{1

2}, Xin-Biao Xu^{1

2}, Ji-Zhe Zhang^{1

2}, Chun-Hua Dong^{1

2}, Guang-Can Guo^{1

2}, C-L Zou^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China.
² CAS Center For Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China. lmwin@ustc.edu.cn.
⁴ CAS Center For Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China. lmwin@ustc.edu.cn.
⁵ CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China. clzou321@ustc.edu.cn.
⁶ CAS Center For Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, China. clzou321@ustc.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Nonlinear optics processes lie at the heart of photonics and quantum optics for their indispensable role in light sources and information processing. During the past decades, the three- and four-wave mixing (χ⁽²⁾ and χ⁽³⁾) effects have been extensively studied, especially in the micro-/nano-structures by which the photon-photon interaction strength is greatly enhanced. So far, the high-order nonlinearity beyond the χ⁽³⁾ has rarely been studied in dielectric materials due to their weak intrinsic nonlinear susceptibility, even in high-quality microcavities. Here, an effective five-wave mixing process (χ⁽⁴⁾) is synthesized by incorporating χ⁽²⁾ and χ⁽³⁾ processes in a single microcavity. The coherence of the synthetic χ⁽⁴⁾ is verified by generating time-energy entangled visible-telecom photon pairs, which requires only one drive laser at the telecom waveband. The photon-pair generation rate from the synthetic process shows an estimated enhancement factor over 500 times upon intrinsic five-wave mixing. Our work demonstrates a universal approach of nonlinear synthesis via photonic structure engineering at the mesoscopic scale rather than material engineering, and thus opens a new avenue for realizing high-order optical nonlinearities and exploring functional photonic devices.