ABSTRACT
Quantum light sources are essential building blocks for many quantum technologies, enabling secure communication, powerful computing, and precise sensing and imaging. Recent advancements have witnessed a significant shift toward the utilization of "flat" optics with thickness at subwavelength scales for the development of quantum light sources. This approach offers notable advantages over conventional bulky counterparts, including compactness, scalability, and improved efficiency, along with added functionalities. This review focuses on the recent advances in leveraging flat optics to generate quantum light sources. Specifically, the generation of entangled photon pairs through spontaneous parametric down-conversion in nonlinear metasurfaces, and single photon emission from quantum emitters including quantum dots and color centers in 3D and 2D materials are explored. The review covers theoretical principles, fabrication techniques, and properties of these sources, with particular emphasis on the enhanced generation and engineering of quantum light sources using optical resonances supported by nanostructures. The diverse application range of these sources is discussed and the current challenges and perspectives in the field are highlighted.
ABSTRACT
Complex polarization states of photon pairs are indispensable in various quantum technologies. Conventional methods for preparing desired two-photon polarization states are realized through bulky nonlinear crystals, which can restrict the versatility and tunability of the generated quantum states due to the fixed crystal nonlinear susceptibility. Here we present a solution using a nonlinear metasurface incorporating multiplexed silica metagratings on a lithium niobate film of 300 nm thickness. We fabricate two orthogonal metagratings on a single substrate with an identical resonant wavelength, thereby enabling the spectral indistinguishability of the emitted photons, and we demonstrate in experiments that the two-photon polarization states can be shaped by the metagrating orientation. Leveraging this essential property, we formulate a theoretical approach for generating arbitrary polarization-entangled qutrit states by combining three metagratings on a single metasurface, allowing the encoding of the desired quantum states or information. Our findings enable miniaturized optically controlled quantum devices by using ultrathin metasurfaces as polarization-entangled photon sources.
ABSTRACT
Metasurfaces consisting of nanoscale structures are underpinning new physical principles for the creation and shaping of quantum states of light. Multiphoton states that are entangled in spatial or angular domains are an essential resource for many quantum applications; however, their production traditionally relies on bulky nonlinear crystals. We predict and demonstrate experimentally the generation of spatially entangled photon pairs through spontaneous parametric down-conversion from a metasurface incorporating a nonlinear thin film of lithium niobate covered by a silica meta-grating. We measure the correlations of photon pairs and identify their spatial antibunching through violation of the classical Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, witnessing the presence of multimode entanglement. Simultaneously, the photon-pair rate is strongly enhanced by 450 times as compared to unpatterned films because of high-quality-factor resonances. These results pave the way to miniaturization of various quantum devices by incorporating ultrathin metasurfaces functioning as room temperature sources of quantum-entangled photons.
ABSTRACT
Induced transparency is a common but remarkable effect in optics. It occurs when a strong driving field is used to render an otherwise opaque material transparent. The effect is known as electromagnetically induced transparency in atomic media and optomechanically induced transparency in systems that consist of coupled optical and mechanical resonators. In this work, we introduce the concept of photothermally induced transparency (PTIT). It happens when an optical resonator exhibits nonlinear behavior due to optical heating of the resonator or its mirrors. Similar to the established mechanisms for induced transparency, PTIT can suppress the coupling between an optical resonator and a traveling optical field. We further show that the dispersion of the resonator can be modified to exhibit slow or fast light. Because of the relatively slow thermal response, we observe the bandwidth of the PTIT to be 2π × 15.9 Hz, which theoretically suggests a group velocity of as low as 5 m/s.
ABSTRACT
We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of a hybrid electro-optomechanical system (EOMS) that allows us to realize the controllable opto-mechanical nonlinearity by driving the microwave LC resonator with a tunable electric field. A controllable optical chaos is realized even without changing the optical pumping. The threshold and lifetime of the chaos could be optimized by adjusting the strength, frequency, or phase of the electric field. This study provides a method of manipulating optical chaos with an electric field. It may offer the prospect of exploring the controllable chaos in on-chip optoelectronic devices and its applications in secret communication.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate PT-symmetry-breaking chaos in an optomechanical system, which features an ultralow driving threshold. In principle, this chaos will emerge once a driving laser is applied to the cavity mode and lasts for a period of time. The driving strength is inversely proportional to the starting time of chaos. This originally comes from the dynamical enhancement of nonlinearity by field localization in the PT-symmetry-breaking phase. Moreover, this chaos is switchable by tuning the system parameters so that a PT-symmetry phase transition occurs. This work may fundamentally broaden the regimes of cavity optomechanics and nonlinear optics. It offers the prospect of exploring ultralow-power-laser-triggered chaos and its potential applications in secret communication.
ABSTRACT
We propose a potentially valuable scheme to measure the properties of an external time-harmonic-driving force with frequency ω via investigating its interaction with the combination of a pump field and a probe field in a generic optomechanical system. We show that the spectra of both the cavity field and output field in the configuration of optomechanically induced transparency are greatly modified by such an external force, leading to many interesting linear and non-linear effects, such as the asymmetric structure of absorption in the frequency domain and the antisymmetry breaking of dispersion near ω = ωm. Furthermore, we find that our scheme can be used to measure the initial phase of the external force. More importantly, this setup may eliminate the negative impact of thermal noise on the measurement of the weak external force in virtue of the process of interference between the probe field and the external force. Finally, we show that our configuration can be employed to improve the measurement resolution of the radiation force produced by a weak ultrasonic wave.
ABSTRACT
We employ a decoupled Heisenberg-Langevin equation for the observation and physical interpretation of mechanical-mode splitting (MMS) of the movable mirror in a generic optomechanical system. Then we identify some observable and significant features of MMS in a two-mode cavity. That is, the second control field coupled to another optical mode is input to the system to modify the mechanical mode, leading to the suppression of transmission, the appearance of the doublet in the spectrum of the anti-Stokes field, and the emergence of optomechanically induced transparency in corresponding new mechanical modes. Furthermore, we open two transparent windows in virtue of MMS and find the second splitting of the mechanical mode in this two-mode optomechanical system.
