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2
. psr nm km . With these parameters our measured data
yield the group delay and dispersion curves as shown in
Fig. 3. They are in good agreement with the results
obtained with a commercial device based on the baseband
phase comparison method using four laser diodes of differ-
. ent wavelengths Anritsu ME9301A .
Next, we repeated the measurement described above
with an optical fiber whose zero dispersion wavelength is
shifted to the 1550 nm band. This fiber allows us to
examine the case where the central wavelength l of the
photon pair light is far from the zero dispersion wave-
length l of the fiber under test. The length of the fiber is
0
2.237 km. The results are summarized in Table 2. Due to
the huge dispersion of this fiber the zero dispersion refer-
. ence has been measured with a short 0.5 m piece of
standard optical fiber as indicated in the first line of Table
2. The width of the time difference distributions are now
significantly larger compared to the standard fiber. This
effect is mainly due to the two-photon dispersion cancella-
tion properties which will be examined in more detail in
the following section. Fitting the data with the same
.. Sellmeier function as above Eq. 3 we find: as0.0159
psrnm
2
and bs9.172=10
10
ps nm
2
. Since our tech-
Fig. 4. Differential group delay and dispersion of the dispersion
shifted fiber.
nique does not provide data at wavelengths close to 1550
nm, a reasonable fit can only by obtained when fixing the
zero dispersion wavelength to 1550 nm before fitting the
data. The resulting group delay and dispersion are plotted
in Fig. 4.
The main source of error in our method is the accuracy
of the wavelength set by tilting the filter angle. From this
we estimate an error of "0.5 nm when determining the
zero dispersion wavelength which exceeds all statistical
errors. This error can be almost completely eliminated
using commercial devices with up to 0.05 nm wavelength
resolution. Otherwise, the achieved accuracy is only lim-
ited by the electronics and the measuring time. The accu-
racy can also be further improved by increasing the num-
ber of wavelengths used in the measurement.
4. Two-photon dispersion cancellation
To examine the two-photon dispersion cancellation
properties mentioned in the introduction, we first refer to
the width of the detected coincidence peaks as indicated in
Table 1. The width of the time interval peak found for
signal and idler photons of equal wavelengths indicates the
'
time jitter of the single detectors Dt s227 2 f160 ps.
D
Table 2
Measured data for 2.237 km of dispersion shifted fiber
. . . . . Signal wavelength nm Idler wavelength nm Delay ps Width FWHM ps
. . 1320 1321.6 0 ref. fiber 264 ref. fiber
1314.5 1327.2 416.24 756
1307.2 1334.7 965.35 735
1297.6 1344.8 1740.25 718
1286.2 1357.3 2808.04 952
1271.9 1373.6 3756.69 869
( ) J. Brendel et al.rOptics Communications 151 1998 3539 39
The same result is obtained when replacing the test fiber
by a short fiber. Notice, that this width remains unchanged
when l and l are symmetrically apart from the zero
s i
dispersion wavelength l , like e.g. l s1286.2 nm and
0 s
l s1357.3 nm.
i
This result should be compared to equivalent classical
light pulses with negligible temporal width and Dls10
nm bandwidth. The width of the classical pulses leaving
w x the test fiber can be approximated by DtsDLDl ps ,
. where D is the dispersion of the fiber in psr nm km and
L the fiber length in km. With our measured dispersion
. . data D 1286.2 nm s 3.8 psr nm km and D 1357.3
s i
. .. . nm s y3.34 psr nm km we obtain Dt 1286.2 nm
s
. s 247 ps and Dt 1257.3 nm s y217 ps. From this we
i
deduce an expected total width of the classical two detec-
tor correlation signal Dt by
classic
2 2 2
( Dt s Dt qDt q2Dt s400 ps. 7 .
classic s i D
In contrast, due to the energy correlation of the photon
pairs within the two 10 nm bandwidth intervals, the result-
ing two-photon dispersion has to be approximated by the
w x sum of the dispersion at the two pass bands 7 . Under this
assumption the total width of the two photon time differ-
ence distribution is
2
2
( Dt s Dt qDt q2Dt s228 ps. 8 . .
two- photon s i D
As a consequence of the two-photon dispersion cancella-
tion the pulsewidth remains almost unchanged, in accor-
dance with our experimental data.
The dispersion can only be cancelled as long as the
dispersion function has opposite signs at the two pass-
bands, i.e. as long as the central wavelength of the photon
. pairs is close to the zero dispersion wavelength lfl .
0
To examine the case where the dispersion has equal signs
we refer to the results obtained with the dispersion shifted
fiber as summarized in Table 2. To compare the pulse
broadening of the two photon light with classical light we
. take as an example the values D 1297.6 nm s y19.1
s
. . . psr nm km , and D 1344.8 nm s y14.6 psr nm km
i
. from our measured dispersion data. With Eq. 7 we
calculate the expected total time jitter for classical light
. Dt s583.5 ps. In contrast, Eq. 8 which takes into
classic
account the two-photon energy correlations yields
Dt s787 ps which is close to our experimental
two- photon
value of 718 ps. Therefore our results show that the
two-photon quantum correlations can give rise to a disper-
sion enhancement effect compared to a classical light field
of equal spectral distribution.
5. Conclusions
We have introduced a novel dispersion measurement
technique which takes advantage of the temporal and
spectral correlations of photon pairs in a non-classical light
field. It demonstrates that two-photon metrological applica-
tions based on compact two-photon sources are straightfor-
ward. Our system is capable of measuring the group delay
in the 1310 nm region where the results agree well with a
commercial device. The instrumentation is rather simple
and cheap, but photon counting at 1310 nm is required.
Today Ge-detectors have to be kept at liquid nitrogen
temperature which is still a drawback for practical applica-
tions. Current experiments show that photon counting at
about y508C may be possible using InGaAs detectors
w x 19 . Also, the measuring time to achieve high resolutions
comparable to commercial devices is still long about 50
. min with our present laboratory setup . An advanced de-
vice is currently being developed which will reduce the
measuring time down to a few minutes and will also
extend the wavelength region towards 1550 nm.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Swiss Priority Program
. Optics PPO Quantum Optics and the Training and
. Mobility of Researches TMR Programme The Physics
of Quantum Information, sponsored by the Swiss OFES.
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