Effect of group-velocity dispersion on the generation of multimode pulsed squeezed light in a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator

Abstract Parametric down-conversion in a nonlinear crystal is a widely employed technique for generating quadrature squeezed light with multiple modes, which finds applications in quantum metrology, quantum information and communication. Here we study the generation of temporally multimode femtosecond pulsed squeezed light in a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (SPOPO) operating below the oscillation threshold, while considering the presence of non-compensated intracavity group-velocity dispersion. Based on the developed time-domain model of the system, we show that the dispersion results in mode-dependent detuning of the broadband supermodes of the pulsed parametric process from the cavity resonance due to temporal Gouy phase, as well as linear coupling between these supermodes. With perturbation theory up to the second order in the coupling coefficients between modes, we obtained a solution for the amplitudes of multiple supermodes given an arbitrary sub-threshold pump level. The dispersion affects the quantum state of the supermodes by influencing their squeezing level and the rotation of the squeezing ellipse. It also affects the entanglement among the supermodes, leading to reduced suppression of shot noise level as measured in the balanced homodyne detection scheme. Furthermore, our study highlights the potential of SPOPO with group-velocity dispersion as a testbench for experimental investigations of multimode effects in linearly evanescent coupled parametric oscillators.