Two-photon spectral amplitude of entangled states resolved in separable Schmidt modes

Abstract

The ability to access high dimensionality in Hilbert spaces represents a demanding key-stone for state-of-the-art quantum information. The manipulation of entangled states in continuous variables, wavevector as well frequency, represents a powerful resource in this sense. The number of dimensions of the Hilbert space that can be used in practical information protocols can be determined by the number of Schmidt modes that it is possible to address one by one. In the case of wavevector variables, the Schmidt modes can be losslessly selected using single-mode fibre and a spatial light modulator, but no similar procedure exists for the frequency space. The aim of this work is to present a technique to engineer the spectral properties of biphoton light, emitted via ultrafast spontaneous parametric down conversion, in such a way that the two-photon spectral amplitude (TPSA) contains several non-overlapping Schmidt modes, each of which can be filtered losslessly in frequency variables. Such TPSA manipulation is operated by a fine balancing of parameters like the pump frequency, the shaping of pump pulse spectrum, the dispersion dependence of spontaneous parametric down-conversion crystals as well as their length. Measurements have been performed exploiting the group velocity dispersion induced by the passage of optical fields through dispersive media, operating a frequency-to-time two-dimensional Fourier transform of the TPSA. Exploiting this kind of measurement we experimentally demonstrate the ability to control the Schmidt modes structure in TPSA through the pump spectrum manipulation.