Two-dimensional control of a biphoton joint spectrum

Abstract

Control over the joint spectral amplitude of a photon pair has proved highly desirable for many quantum applications, since it contains the spectral quantum correlations, and has crucial effects on the indistinguishability of photons, as well as promising emerging applications involving complex quantum functions and frequency encoding of qudits. Until today, this has been achieved by engineering a single degree of freedom, either by custom poling nonlinear crystal or by shaping the pump pulse. We present a combined approach where two degrees of freedom, the phase-matching function, and the pump spectrum, are controlled. This approach enables the two-dimensional control of the joint spectral amplitude, generating a variety of spectrally encoded quantum states - including frequency uncorrelated states, frequency-bin Bell states, and biphoton qudit states. In addition, the joint spectral amplitude is controlled by photon bunching and anti-bunching, reflecting the symmetry of the phase-matching function.