MURI Fellow on Quantum Information Technology: Entanglement, Teleportation, and Quantum Memory

摘要

This grant supported a MURI Fellow to work on topics in the area of Quantum Information Technology. Specifically, Jay E. Sharping worked on the following research tasks: i) Generation of polarization-entangled photon-pair pulses near 1.5 micron wavelength by use of the Kerr nonlinearity of standard dispersion-shifted optical fiber and ii) applying the same techniques to obtain polarization-entangled photon-pair pulses near the 0.8 micron wavelength by use of novel micro-structured optical fibers (also called holey fibers). In both cases, nondegenerate four-wave mixing was used to simultaneously generate signal/idler photon pairs. Thorough studies of the classical nonlinear optical processes were performed and several useful applications such as parametric amplification, parametric oscillation, and all-optical switching were demonstrated. Direct detection and photon counting techniques were used to experimentally verify quantum-correlated signal/idler pair production. Photon counting tools for detection at wavelengths of 1.5 micron were built and characterized. Time and polarization multiplexed four-wave mixing processes were then used to generate polarization-entangled photon pairs, and the quality of the entanglement was evaluated through quantum interference and Bell-inequality- violation measurements.