We demonstrate the coherent frequency conversion of structured light, optical beams in which the phase varies in each point of the transverse plane, from the near infrared (803nm) to the visible (527nm). The frequency conversion process makes use of
sum-frequency generation in a periodically poled lithium niobate (ppLN) crystal with the help of a 1540-nm Gaussian pump beam. We perform far-field intensity measurements of the frequency-converted field, and verify the sought-after transformation of the characteristic intensity and phase profiles for various input modes. The coherence of the frequency-conversion process is confirmed using a mode-projection technique with a phase mask and a single-mode fiber. The presented results could be of great relevance to novel applications in high-resolution microscopy and quantum information processing.
We demonstrate a compact, robust, and highly efficient source of polarization-entangled photons, based on linear bi-directional down-conversion in a novel folded sandwich configuration. Bi-directionally pumping a single periodically poled KTiOPO$_4$
(ppKTP) crystal with a 405-nm laser diode, we generate entangled photon pairs at the non-degenerate wavelengths 784 nm (signal) and 839 nm (idler), and achieve an unprecedented detection rate of 11.8 kcps for 10.4 $mu$W of pump power (1.1 million pairs / mW), in a 2.9-nm bandwidth, while maintaining a very high two-photon entanglement quality, with a Bell-state fidelity of $99.3pm0.3$%.
We present a simple but highly efficient source of polarization-entangled photons based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in bulk periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate crystals (PPKTP) pumped by a 405 nm laser diode. Utilizing
one of the highest available nonlinear coefficients in a non-degenerate, collinear type-0 phase-matching configuration, we generate polarization entanglement via the crossed-crystal scheme and detect 0.64 million photon pair events/s/mW, while maintaining an overlap fidelity with the ideal Bell state of 0.98 at a pump power of 0.025 mW.
