Directional emission of down-converted photons from a dielectric nanoresonator

Abstract

Creation of correlated photon pairs is one of the key topics in contemporary quantum optics. Here, we theoretically describe the generation of photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a resonant spherical nanoparticle made of a dielectric material with bulk $\chi^{(2)}$ nonlinearity. We pick the nanoparticle size that satisfies the condition of resonant eigenmodes described by Mie theory. We reveal that highly directional photon-pair generation can be observed utilising the nonlinear Kerker-type effect, and that this regime provides useful polarisation correlations.