Twin photon pairs in a high-Q silicon microresonator

Abstract

We report the generation of high-purity twin photon pairs through cavity-enhanced non-degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a high-Q silicon microdisk resonator. Twin photon pairs are created within the same cavity mode and are consequently expected to be identical in all degrees of freedom. The device is able to produce twin photons at telecommunication wavelengths with a pair generation rate as large as $(3.96\pm0.03)\times10^5 ~{\rm pairs/s}$, within a narrow bandwidth of 0.72 GHz. A coincidence-to-accidental ratio of $660\pm62$ was measured, the highest value reported to date for twin photon pairs, at a pair generation rate of $(2.47\pm0.04)\times10^4 ~{\rm pairs/s}$. Through careful engineering of the dispersion matching window, we have reduced the ratio of photons resulting from degenerate FWM to non-degenerate FWM to less than 0.15.