Nanoscale nonlinear quantum photonics

by Dr Sina Saravi (FSU Jena)

Monday 28 Nov 2022, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Berlin

Abbeanum/Ground floor-HS1 - Hörsaal 1 (TPI, FSU Jena)

Nonlinear nanostructured and nanoscale photonic systems offer new opportunities for optical quantum technologies. Aside from the obvious advantage of miniaturization, they also offer new capabilities in engineering the properties of the quantum states generated through nonlinear interactions, such as photon pairs and squeezed light. More generally, in such nanoscale systems, one gains access to new degrees of freedom in tailoring nonlinear quantum optical interactions. This could be done through strong control over modal dispersion and optical density of states, having access to near-field interactions and evanescent modes, and possibility of having new types of phase-matching conditions or lack of them. At the same time, commonly in such nanoscale photonic systems, there is an unavoidable presence of loss, either through material absorption or scattering, or inherent leakage mechanisms. When the loss or decay mechanisms are directly combined into the nonlinear quantum process, it can create different behaviors compared to when the nonlinear interaction is separated from the loss mechanism, creating new challenges and at the same time new opportunities.

In this talk we review the state of nonlinear quantum photonics in nanostructured and nanoscale systems, with a focus on engineered generation of quantum light. We then focus on how to describe nonlinear quantum optical interactions in nanoscale photonic systems in the presence of loss, leakage, evanescent fields, and in non-paraxial regimes, and how such effects and regimes of operation can be utilized for novel applications in optical quantum technologies, such as quantum spectroscopy, quantum imaging, entangled photon-pair generation, and creating hybrid systems.