A millimeter-wave Bell Test using a ferrite parametric amplifier and a homodyne interferometer

Abstract

A combined ferrite parametric amplifier and millimeter-wave homodyne interferometer are proposed as an ambient temperature Bell Test. It is shown that the non-linear magnetic susceptibility of the yttrium iron garnet (YIG) ferrite, on account of its narrow line-width Larmor precessional resonance, make it an ideal material for the creation of entangled photons. These can be measured using a homodyne interferometer, as the much larger number of thermally generated photons associated with ambient temperature emission can be screened out. The proposed architecture may enable YIG quantum technology-based sensors to be developed, mimicking in the millimeter-wave band the large number of quantum optical experiments in the near-infrared and visible regions which had been made possible by use of the nonlinear beta barium borate ferroelectric, an analogue of YIG. It is illustrated here how the YIG parametric amplifier can reproduce quantum optical Type I and Type II wave interactions, which can be used to create entangled photons in the millimeter-wave band. It is estimated that when half a cubic centimeter of YIG crystal is placed in a magnetic field of a few Tesla and pumped with 5 Watts of millimeter-wave radiation, approximately 0.5 × 1012 entangled millimeter-wave photon pairs per second are generated by the spin-wave interaction. This means an integration time of only a few tens of seconds is needed for a successful Bell Test. A successful demonstration of this will lead to novel architectures of entanglement-based quantum technology room temperature sensors, re-envisioning YIG as a modern quantum material.