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communication [at] ens-paris-saclay.fr (communication)

Resonant optical parametric oscillator for quantum communications

Aliou LY, Lasers & Optics Group, Aimé Cotton laboratory, will have PhD thesis defence about "building a continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator for quantum communications applications", on tuesday 12th, december.

Long distance quantum communications are limited to few tens of km due to the attenuation of light in telecom fibres.

Quantum repeaters (quantum relays synchronized by photonic quantum memories) were introduced in order to increase distances. Or, currently, the most efficient memories do not operate at wavelengths in the telecom C band. In order to take advantage of these memories, the use of quantum interfaces (second order nonlinear medium) was proposed as an alternative.

Thus, by adding by sum frequency generation a pump photon at an appropriate wavelength to the telecom photon carrying the information, one transfers the information to a wavelength compatible with these memories, and this with a preservation of the information initially carried by the telecom photon.

Our aim is thus to build a continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (cw SRO) which will provide a wave at 1648 nm that will be frequency summed to telecom photons at 1536 nm to transfer the information to a photon storable into alkali atoms based memory.

To efficiently transfer the information, the cw SRO has to fulfill some requirements: a high spectral purity (linewidth ~kHz), a high output power (~1 W) and a wavelength longer than that of the telecom photon to be converted. To this aim, we use the non-resonant wave of a cw SRO.

The first work done during this thesis was to experimentally prove the possibility to have both high output power and high spectral purity from a cw SRO. By reusing a cw SRO already built during our previous works, we were able to stabilize at the kHz level the frequency of the non-resonant wave at 947 nm (signal wave) of this SRO, with an output power of more than one watt.

Then, we built the cw SRO of which non-resonant wave at 1648 nm (idler wave) has been frequency stabilized below the kHz level along with an output power of the order of one watt. We next studied the long term stability of the idler wavelength at 1648 nm.

We have measured frequency drifts of the order of 10 MHz/mn. These drifts originating mainly from the reference cavity to which the SRO is locked, can be reduced by, firstly, an active control of the cavity and by, secondly, the use of robust frequency stabilization techniques.