The Dean of Science Award is given in recognition of outstanding performance in the Master of Science program. One certificate will normally be awarded annually to [...]]]> Deny Hamel has been awarded the 2011 University of Waterloo Dean of Science Award for his MSc thesis, Realization of novel entangled photon sources using periodically-poled materials.  Congratulations Deny!

The Dean of Science Award is given in recognition of outstanding performance in the Master of Science program. One certificate will normally be awarded annually to a master’s student from each department in the Science faculty in recognition of creative research as presented in the student’s thesis.

Update: June 14, 2011. Deny received his award today from Terry McMahon, Dean of Science.

And here’s the proof…

Parametric down-conversion is the most common source of entangled photon pairs. It uses a nonlinear optical process to split a pump photon, typically [...]]]> Direct generation of photon triplets using cascaded photon-pair sources by Hannes Hübel, Deny Hamel, Sven Ramelow, Alessandro Fedrizzi, Kevin Resch, and Thomas Jennewein was published today in Nature.

Parametric down-conversion is the most common source of entangled photon pairs.  It uses a nonlinear optical process to split a pump photon, typically from a laser, into two lower energy photons.  It is only natural to ask whether we can find an analogous process for converting one photon into three.  Many different physical mechanisms have been considered for this, but none have proven feasible until now.  Taking advantage of advances in nonlinear optical materials, we have demonstrated, for the first time, production of photon triplets using a cascade of two down-conversion processes.  These photon triplets will find application in quantum information technologies and serve as an interesting new system for fundamental studies.

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