We present an efficient tool capable of measuring the spectral correlations between photons emerging from a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer. We show that for our spectrally factorizable spontaneous downconversion source the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference
visibility decreases as the photons frequency spread is increased to a maximum of 165 nm. Unfiltered, we obtained a visibility of $92.0 pm 0.2 %$. The maximum visibility was $97 pm 0.2 %$ after applying filtering. We show that the tool can be useful for the study of spectral correlations that impair high-visibility and high-fidelity multi-source interference applications.
We characterize a periodically poled KTP crystal that produces an entangled, two-mode, squeezed state with orthogonal polarizations, nearly identical, factorizable frequency modes, and few photons in unwanted frequency modes. We focus the pump beam t
o create a nearly circular joint spectral probability distribution between the two modes. After disentangling the two modes, we observe Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with a raw (background corrected) visibility of 86 % (95 %) when an 8.6 nm bandwidth spectral filter is applied. We measure second order photon correlations of the entangled and disentangled squeezed states with both superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and photon-number-resolving transition-edge sensors. Both methods agree and verify that the detected modes contain the desired photon number distributions.
Integration is currently the only feasible route towards scalable photonic quantum processing devices that are sufficiently complex to be genuinely useful in computing, metrology, and simulation. Embedded on-chip detection will be critical to such de
vices. We demonstrate an integrated photon-number resolving detector, operating in the telecom band at 1550 nm, employing an evanescently coupled design that allows it to be placed at arbitrary locations within a planar circuit. Up to 5 photons are resolved in the guided optical mode via absorption from the evanescent field into a tungsten transition-edge sensor. The detection efficiency is 7.2 pm 0.5 %. The polarization sensitivity of the detector is also demonstrated. Detailed modeling of device designs shows a clear and feasible route to reaching high detection efficiencies.
