Spotlight on Optics

A paper coauthored by Chris Phillips and myself has been selected for a "Spotlight on Optics" highlighting recent work of broad relevance in OSA journals. In the paper, we present a thorough analysis of the effects of domain disorder in QPM devices on a number of applications varying in intensity from single photons to more than many GW/cm².


As the piece's author Dr. Carlota Canalias of KTH in Sweden points out, "we still have not reached the end of the road [for QPM device development], and that a qualitative leap in structuring technology and material development is required in order to achieve QPM devices free of parasitic effects."

The work is a followup to some work we published in 2011 in which we analyzed second-harmonic generation in structures with domain disorder, finding that the disorder enhances conversion efficiency for nominally phase mismatched processes, which, at the time, were limiting the performance of QPM devices for single-photon frequency conversion.  In the new paper, Chris analyzes a number of additional applications, including optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, supercontinuum generation, and nonlinear losses in parametric oscillators.

A Zygo microscope image of the topography of a PPLN wafer.  The nonuniformity in the sizes of the poled "islands" leads to parasitic QPM processes. (c) Jason Pelc.