Tunable entangled photon-pair generation in a liquid crystal

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 631; no. 8020; pp. 294 - 299
• Main Authors: Sultanov, Vitaliy, Kavčič, Aljaž, Kokkinakis, Emmanouil, Sebastián, Nerea, Chekhova, Maria V., Humar, Matjaž
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 11-07-2024; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 132/124; 140/125; 639/624/399/919; 639/624/400/385; 639/624/400/3925; 639/624/400/482; 639/766/483/481; Basic converters; Broadband; Complex systems; Crystals; Efficiency; Electric fields; Ferroelectric materials; Ferroelectricity; Humanities and Social Sciences; Light; Light sources; Liquid crystals; Molecular structure; multidisciplinary; Nematic crystals; Nonlinear optics; Nonlinear systems; Nonlinearity; Optical materials; Optical properties; Optics; Organic materials; Photonic crystals; Photons; Polarization; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07543-5

Liquid crystals, with their ability to self-assemble, strong response to an electric field and integrability into complex systems, are key materials in light-beam manipulation
1
. The recently discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals
2
,
3
also have considerable second-order optical nonlinearity, making them a potential material for nonlinear optics
4
,
5
. Their use as sources of quantum light could considerably extend the boundaries of photonic quantum technologies
6
. However, spontaneous parametric down-conversion, the basic source of entangled photons
7
, heralded single photons
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and squeezed light
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, has so far not been observed in liquid crystals—or in any liquids or organic materials. Here we implement spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal and demonstrate electric-field tunable broadband generation of entangled photons, with an efficiency comparable to that of the best nonlinear crystals. The emission rate and polarization state of photon pairs is markedly varied by applying a few volts or twisting the molecular orientation along the sample. A liquid-crystal source enables a special type of quasi-phase matching
10
, which is based on the molecular twist structure and is therefore reconfigurable for the desired spectral and polarization properties of photon pairs. Such sources promise to outperform standard nonlinear optical materials in terms of functionality, brightness and the tunability of the generated quantum state. The concepts developed here can be extended to complex topological structures, macroscopic devices and multi-pixel tunable quantum light sources.
Electric-field tunable generation of entangled photon pairs is achieved by spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal, with an efficiency comparable to that of the best nonlinear crystals.