High-brightness, low-noise, all-fiber photon pair source

Abstract

We demonstrate an all-fiber photon pair source for the critical telecom C-band. We achieve high pair generation rates in excess of 10 MHz while maintaining coincidence-to-accidental ratios (CARs) greater than 100. This is one of the brightest and lowest-noise photon pair sources ever demonstrated. We achieve the high pair rate through CW-pumped spontaneous four-wave mixing in dispersion-shifted fiber. We achieve the high CAR by cooling the fiber to 4 K to suppress the Raman generation and detecting the photons with low jitter and low dark count superconducting single-photon detectors.