Quantum frequency conversion of single photons from a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond to telecommunication wavelengths

Dréau, A.; Tcheborateva, A.; El Mahdaoui, A.; Bonato, C.; Hanson, R.

Quantum frequency conversion of single photons from a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond to telecommunication wavelengths

Title

Quantum frequency conversion of single photons from a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond to telecommunication wavelengths

Author

Dréau, A.
Tcheborateva, A.
El Mahdaoui, A.
Bonato, C.
Hanson, R.

Publication year

2018

Abstract

We report on the conversion to telecommunication wavelengths of single photons emitted by nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond. By means of different frequency generation, we convert spin-selective photon at 637 nm, associated with the coherent NV zero-photon line, to the target wavelength of 1588 nm in the L-telecommunication band. The succesful conversion is evidenced by time-resolved detection revealing a telecommunication-photon lifetime identical to that of the original 637-nm photon. Furthermore, we show by second-order correlation measurements that the single-photon statistics are preserved. The overall efficiency of this one-step conversion reaches 17% in our current setup, along with a signal-to-noise ration of approximately 7 despite the low probability (<10-3) of an incident 637-nm photon. This result shows the potential for efficient telecommunication-photon-NV-center interfaces and marks an important step towards future long-range entanglement-based quantum networks.

Subject

High Tech Systems & Materials
Electronics
Industrial Innovation
Nonlinear optics
Optical quantum information processing
Quantum entanglement
Quantum networks
Communication networks
Photon pairs
Parametric down-conversion