Developing Zn-Indiffused MgO-Doped PPLN Ridge Waveguides for Type-II Telecom Photon Pair Production

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) presents a convenient method of producing highly correlated heralded entangled photon pairs for quantum applications and networking. Of particular interest is Type-II SPDC, where signal and idler photons possess orthogonal polarisations, permitting straightforward entanglement in the useful polarisation basis. To the best of our knowledge, this has hitherto not been demonstrated in Zn-indiffused MgO:PPLN ridge waveguides, which offer excellent mode matching to standard telecoms fibers [1]. A particular difficulty in achieving SPDC in waveguides is to establish optimal phase-matching conditions. A common approach [2] is to perform standard SHG from the target SPDC wavelength first, leveraging the greater conversion efficiencies available in this regime. For example, in this work we target generation of Type-II SPDC photon pairs at 1310nm telecoms wavelengths suited to long-distance quantum networking protocols such as quantum key distribution [3], prompting initial testing of phase matching conditions via Type-II SHG.