Ultra-efficient generation of time-energy entangled photon pairs in an InGaP photonic crystal cavity

Abstract

The typical approaches to generate heralded single photons rely on parametric processes, with the advantage of generating highly entangled states at the price of a random pair emission. To overcome this limit, degenerate spontaneous Four-Wave-Mixing is a reliable technique which combines two pump photons into a pair of signal and idler photons via Kerr nonlinear optical effect. By exploiting the intrinsic small confinement volume and thermally tuning the resonances of a 20 μm-long Photonic Crystal cavity, we efficiently generate time-energy entangled photon pairs and heralded single photons at a large maximum on-chip rate of 22 MHz, using 36 μW of pump power. We measure time-energy entanglement with net visibility up to 96.6 % using 1 second integration time constant. Our measurements demonstrate the viability of Photonic Crystal cavities to act as an alternative and efficient photon pair source for quantum photonics.