Suppressing parasitic processes in frequency-degenerate photon pair generation via cascaded up- and down-conversion in thin film lithium niobate

Frequency-degenerate photon pairs generated using nonlinear photonic integrated devices are a crucial resource for scalable quantum information processing and metrology. However, their realization based on dual-pump spontaneous four-wave mixing is hindered by unwanted parametric processes occurring within the same phase matching band, which degrade the signal-to-noise ratio and reduce the purity of the associated quantum states. Here, we propose a dual-pump scheme to produce frequency-degenerate photon pairs, based on cascaded sum-frequency generation and spontaneous parametric down-conversion occurring within a single waveguide, while strongly suppressing parasitic photon pair generation from single-pump processes. This approach significantly simplifies the design compared to microresonator-based methods and enables both pumping and collection of photon pairs entirely in the telecom band. We experimentally validate the concept in a layer-poled thin film lithium niobate waveguide, achieving frequency-degenerate photon pair generation with a brightness of (1.0±0.3)×105 Hz nm−1 mW−2 and a 40 dB suppression of unwanted single-pump processes.