Ultrafast measurement of a single-photon wave packet using an optical Kerr gate

Ultrafast quantum optics with time-frequency entangled photons is at the forefront of progress towards future quantum technologies. However, to unravel the time domain structure of entangled photons and exploit fully their rich dimensionality, a single-photon detector with sub-picosecond temporal resolution is required. Here, we present ultrafast single-photon detection using an optical Kerr gate composed of a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) placed inside a Sagnac interferometer. A near-rectangle temporal waveform of a heralded single-photon generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion is measured with temporal resolution as high as 224 +/- 9 fs. The large nonlinearity and long effective interaction length of the PCF enables maximum detection efficiency to be achieved with only 30.5 mW gating pulse average power, demonstrating an order-of-magnitude improvement compared to optical gating with sum-frequency generation. Also, we discuss the trade-off relationship between detection efficiency and temporal resolution. Published by Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Automated summary

Ultrafast quantum optics requires a single-photon detector with sub-picosecond temporal resolution. Researchers have proposed an ultrafast single-photon detection method using an optical Kerr gate, which achieves a temporal resolution of up to 224 +/- 9 fs using a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and a Sagnac interferometer.