Broadband Spectroscopy and Interferometry with Undetected Photons at Strong Parametric Amplification

Abstract

Nonlinear interferometry with entangled photons allows for characterizing a sample without detecting the photons interacting with it. This method enables highly sensitive optical sensing in the wavelength regions where efficient detectors are still under development. Recently, nonlinear interferometry has been applied to interferometric measurement techniques with broadband light sources, such as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and infrared optical coherence tomography. However, they have been demonstrated with photon pairs produced through spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) at a low parametric gain, where the average number of photons per mode is much smaller than one. The regime of high-gain SPDC offers several important advantages, such as the amplification of light after its interaction with the sample and a large number of photons per mode at the interferometer output. This work presents broadband spectroscopy and high-resolution optical coherence tomography with undetected photons generated via high-gain SPDC in an aperiodically poled lithium niobate crystal. To prove the principle, reflective Fourier-transform near-infrared spectroscopy with a spectral bandwidth of 17 THz and optical coherence tomography with an axial resolution of 11 µm are demonstrated.