Narrow Band Source of Transform-Limited Photon Pairs via Four-Wave Mixing in a Cold Atomic Ensemble

We observe narrowband pairs of time-correlated photons of wavelengths 776\,nm and 795\,nm from non-degenerate four-wave mixing in a laser-cooled atomic ensemble of $^{87}${Rb} using a cascade decay scheme. Coupling the photon pairs into single mode fibers, we observe an instantaneous rate of 7700 pairs per second with silicon avalanche photodetectors, and an optical bandwidth below 30\,MHz. Detection events exhibit a strong correlation in time ($g^{(2)}(τ=0)\approx5800$), and a high coupling efficiency indicated by a pair-to-single ratio of 23%. The violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality by a factor of $8.4\times10^6$ indicates a strong non-classical correlation between the generated fields, while a Hanbury--Brown--Twiss experiment in the individual photons reveals their thermal nature. The narrow bandwidth and brightness of our source makes it ideal for interacting with atomic ensembles in quantum communication protocols.

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