Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion from GaAs Nanowires at Telecom Wavelength

Abstract

We report on the generation of photon pairs at 1550 nm from free-standing epitaxially grown self-assisted micrometre long GaAs nanowires. The efficiency of the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process has a rate of 320 GHz/Wm normalized to the transmission of the setup, the pump intensity, and the volume of the nanostructure. GaAs is a high index dielectric that can support electromagnetic Mie modes, therefore we model how shorter nanowires could improve the second-harmonic signal and we found that sub-micro long nanowires (600 nm length and 250 nm diameter) can support quality factors up to 15 at the pump wavelength (780 nm). We anticipate that the near field enhancement compared to micrometre long nanowires will boost the second-harmonic generation and, correspondingly, the biphoton rate efficiency.