WDM photon pair source stabilized in a wide temperature range with cascaded optical nonlinearities and DFG monitoring

In this paper, we report a multi-channel wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) photon pair source operating in a wide temperature range. The photon pair generation rates in multiple WDM channels were stabilized against changes in the operation temperature by combining the spectral flatness of cascaded optical nonlinearities (cascaded sum frequency generation/spontaneous parametric downconversion) with a differential frequency generation monitoring feedback system. The proposed method was experimentally validated using a type-I periodically poled LiNbO₃ ridge waveguide device as the photon pair source. We successfully generated 16 WDM photon pairs at almost the same rate (0.024358 ± 0.000631 pairs/s/Hz), even when the operating temperature was varied from 27.01 °C to 60.16 °C.