Active engineering of four-wave mixing spectral entanglement in hollow-core fibers

Abstract: We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally a high level of control of the four-wave mixing process in an inert gas filled inhibited-coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fiber in order to generate photon pairs. The specific multiple-branch dispersion profile in such fibers allows both entangled and separable bi-photon states to be produced. By controlling the choice of gas, its pressure and the fiber length, we experimentally generate various joint spectral intensity profiles in a stimulated regime that is transferable to the spontaneous regime. The generated profiles cover both spectrally separable and entangled bi-photons and feature frequency tuning over 17 THz, demonstrating the large dynamic control offered by such a photon pair source.