| Application of quantum sources in communication and information processing are believed to bring a new revolution to the on-going information age. The generation of applicable quantum sources such as single photon state and two-photon state, appears to be one of the most difficult in experimental quantum optics. Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (PDC) is known to generate two-photon state, but bandwidth problem makes it less applicable in quantum information processing.; The aim of this work is to generate a narrow band two-photon state and apply it to quantum information processing. We start by developing a cavity enhanced PDC device to narrow the bandwidth of the two-photon state. Direct measurement of the bandwidth of the generated state has been made and the quantum theory of such a device has been investigated. An application of this narrow band two-photon state is to generate anti-bunched photons for quantum cryptography, based on the quantum interference between the two-photon state and a coherent state. The feasibility of this scheme for pulsed pump is also investigated. When applying the concept of mode locking in lasers to a two-photon state, we have mode-locked two-photon state which exhibits a comb-like correlation function and may be used for engineering of quantum states in time domain. Other applications such as demonstration of single photon nonlocality, nonlinear sign gate in quantum computation, and direct measurement of quantum beating, will also be addressed. |
