CAVITY ENHANCED SOURCE OF FREQUENCY ENTANGLED PHOTONS FOR EFFICIENT QUANTUM NETWORK INTERFACES (ARTES 4.0 SL SPL 3H.003) EXPRO+ - RE-ISSUE

Objective: The objective of the activity is to design, develop and test a narrowband entangled photon source for future quantum networks.Targeted Improvements:Higher key-rates enhanced by individual cavity modes. The generation of entangled photon pairs at multiple frequencies, taking advantage of enhanced output rates due to a finessed cavity, with a direct interconnectivity to the optical communication layer using quantum hardware.Description:A way to generate entangled photon pairs is through parametric spontaneous down-conversion, where high energetic pump photons can be converted into entangled photon pairs using a non-linear crystal. The energy of each photon pair must sum up to the energy of the pump-photon. That leads together with the momentum conservation to phase matching conditions, and hence the centre frequencies and the bandwidth of the generated photon pairs are defined.By periodically poling the crystal, arbitrary wavelength combinations of the photons can be selected. Placing the crystal inside an optical resonator, the output spectrum of the photon pair source can further be designed to be narrowband, with well separated frequency bins, allowing for efficient frequency multiplexing or for coupling to atomic systems, like memories, clocks, sensors.This activity will design, manufacture and test a photon pair source for frequency multiplexed transmission both for use with wavelengths defined in the C-band ITU and for coupling photons to an atomic system such as quantum memory. This is a versatile source for future quantum networks which exploits entanglement over more than one node and can efficiently couple to memories, clocks, sensors or computers.Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to:http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Business_with_ESA/Small_and_Medium_Sized_Enterprises/Opportunities_for_SMEs/Procurement_policy_on_fair_access_for_SMEs_-_the_C1-C4_Clauses