Lute Maleki for an in-person presentation at CLEO Conference 2026

In a paper entitled “Resonant Nondegenerate Four-Wave Mixing in a Counterpropagating Geometry” to be presented in CLEO, 26, a team consisting of OEwaves and JPL scientists describe a new compact and efficient source of entangled photons.

Entangled photon sources are essential for quantum information processing and quantum sensing applications. A widely adopted method for generating photon pairs relies on the interaction of laser light with nonlinear optical resonators. In particular, signal and idler photon pairs are commonly produced via four-wave mixing in microcavities pumped by a continuous-wave laser. However, this approach typically suffers from low conversion efficiency, and the generated photons must be spectrally filtered to isolate the desired modes, further reducing overall system efficiency.

The team of OEwaves and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory demonstrated a scheme that addresses both limitations. By employing two counter-propagating pump lasers in a high-Q magnesium fluoride whispering-gallery-mode resonator, widely separated signal and idler photon pairs are generated via non-degenerate four-wave mixing. This configuration exhibits high sideband generation efficiency, with theoretical analysis indicating the possibility of approaching unity (100%) power conversion efficiency under optimal conditions. Furthermore, each of the two entangled photons propagate in opposing directions to eliminate the need for filtering.

In addition, this scheme enables the first reported observation of correlation between the two pump lasers, each self-injection locked to orthogonal resonator modes. This correlation is evidenced by the transfer of modulation from one laser to the other, highlighting a previously unobserved coupling mechanism in such systems.

Session Title: Chi(2) and Chi(3)-Based Frequency Conversion and Resonators

Register Here: https://www.cleoconference.org/registration-2026