Second order coherence of broadband down-converted light on ultrashort time scale determined by two photon absorption in semiconductor

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 18; no. 19; pp. 20401 - 20408
• Main Authors: Boitier, Fabien, Godard, Antoine, Ryasnyanskiy, Aleksandr, Dubreuil, Nicolas, Delaye, Philippe, Fabre, Claude, Rosencher, Emmanuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Optical Society of America - OSA Publishing 13-09-2010
• Subjects: Equipment Design - instrumentation; Equipment Failure Analysis - instrumentation; Interferometry - instrumentation; Light; Optics; Photometry - instrumentation; Photons; Physics; Semiconductors; Spectrometry, Fluorescence - instrumentation; Multiphoton processes; Photon statistics
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/oe.18.020401

We study the photon correlation properties of broadband parametric down-converted light. The measurement of the photon correlation is carried out thanks to a modified Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometer based on two photon absorption in GaAs detector. Since this method is not affected by the phase matching conditions of the detecting apparatus (so called "final state post-selection"), the detection bandwidth can be extremely large. This is illustrated by studying, with the same apparatus, the degree of second order coherence of parametric light in both degenerate and non-degenerate cases. We show that our experiment is able to determine the coherent as well as the incoherent contributions to the degree of second order coherence of parametric light with a time resolution in the fs range scale.