Method and a system for pulsed excitation of a nonlinear medium for photon pair generation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10505335-B2
Application number	US-201615552061-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 15, 2016
Priority date	Mar 19, 2015
Publication date	Dec 10, 2019
Grant date	Dec 10, 2019

Abstract

A method and a system for pulsed excitation of a nonlinear medium for photon pair generation, he method comprising exciting a single narrow resonance of a nonlinear resonant element with a pulsed laser field, comprising embedding a nonlinear resonant element directly into an external laser cavity and locking the cavity modes.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for a pulsed bandwidth-matched excitation of a single narrow resonance of a nonlinear resonant element with a pulsed laser field, comprising embedding a nonlinear resonant element directly into an external laser cavity, selecting one single resonance of the nonlinear resonant element and locking external cavity resonances within the selected resonance of the nonlinear resonant element.

2. A method for a pulsed bandwidth-matched excitation of a nonlinear resonant element for the generation of photon pairs, comprising embedding a nonlinear resonant element directly into an external laser cavity, selecting one single resonance of the nonlinear resonant element and locking external cavity resonances within the selected resonance of the nonlinear resonant element, the photon pairs being generated by a spontaneous nonlinear effect in the nonlinear resonant element.

3. The method of claim 1 , comprising selecting a resonant nonlinear element among one of: a nonlinear optical guided loop, a micro-toroid resonator, a micro-sphere resonator, a nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavity, a nonlinear Ikeda cavity, and a whispering gallery mode resonator.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises passive mode-locking the cavity modes.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises using one of: saturable absorbers, nonlinear loop mirrors, nonlinear polarization rotation, additive pulse-mode-locking and nonlinear Kerr lenses.

6. The method of claim 1 , comprising placing the nonlinear resonant element inside a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror section of a figure-8 optical cavity and selecting a single nonlinear cavity resonance in a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror configuration.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises active mode-locking the cavity modes.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises using an active intensity or phase modulator and selecting a modulation amplitude at a frequency matching a free spectral range of the external cavity.

9. A system for pulsed bandwidth-matched excitation of a single narrow resonance pulsed excitation with a pulsed laser field, comprising an external laser cavity and a nonlinear resonant element, said nonlinear resonant element being directly embedded within said external laser cavity, wherein one single resonance of the nonlinear resonant element is selected and external cavity resonances are locked within the selected resonance of the nonlinear resonant element.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the resonant nonlinear element is one of: a nonlinear optical guided loop, a micro-toroid resonator, a micro-sphere resonator, a nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavity, a nonlinear Ikeda cavity, and a whispering gallery mode resonator.

11. The system of claim 9 , further comprising a mode-locking section.

12. The system of claim 9 , comprising one of: saturable absorbers, nonlinear loop mirrors, nonlinear polarization rotation, additive pulse-mode-locking and nonlinear Kerr lenses.

13. The system of claim 9 , comprising a modulator.

14. An intra-cavity pulsed pumped optical parametric oscillator, comprising an external laser cavity and a nonlinear resonant element, said nonlinear resonant element being directly embedded within said external laser cavity, wherein one single resonance of the nonlinear resonant element is selected and external cavity resonances are locked within the selected resonance of the nonlinear resonant element.

15. The method of claim 2 , comprising selecting a resonant nonlinear element among one of: a nonlinear optical guided loop, a micro-toroid resonator, a micro-sphere resonator, a nonlinear Fabry-Perot cavity, a nonlinear Ikeda cavity, and a whispering gallery mode resonator.

16. The method of claim 2 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises passive mode-locking the cavity modes.

17. The method of claim 2 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises using one of: saturable absorbers, nonlinear loop mirrors, nonlinear polarization rotation, additive pulse-mode-locking and nonlinear Kerr lenses.

18. The method of claim 2 , comprising placing the nonlinear resonant element inside a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror section of a figure-8 optical cavity and selecting a single nonlinear cavity resonance in a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror configuration.

19. The method of claim 2 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises active mode-locking the cavity modes.

20. The method of claim 2 , wherein said locking the cavity modes comprises using an active intensity or phase modulator and selecting a modulation amplitude at a frequency matching a free spectral range of the external cavity.

Assignees

• Inst Nat Rech Scient

Inventors

• Jestin Yoann
• Morandotti Roberto
• Kues Michael
• Wetzel Benjamin
• Reimer Christian
• Roztocki Piotr

Classifications

• H01S3/1112

  Passive mode locking · CPC title

• H01S3/06754

  Fibre amplifiers (H01S3/06708 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H01S3/108

  using non-linear optical devices, e.g. exhibiting Brillouin or Raman scattering {(mode locking using a non-linear element H01S3/1112)} · CPC title

• G02B6/29338

  Loop resonators · CPC title

• H01S3/0078

  Frequency filtering · CPC title