Four-wave mixing in microstructure fiber

Summary form only given. Recently much excitement has been generated over the application of microstructure fibers (MF) in nonlinear optics. We report what we believe is the first controlled FWM experiment in a MF. We demonstrate achieving nondegenerate parametric gain based on phase-matched FWM for a pump wavelength of 782 nm, which is near the /spl lambda//sub 0/ of our microstructure fiber. Since the dispersion characteristics of these fibers can be adjusted during the fabrication process, our experiment demonstrates the potential use of MF in devices such as broadband parametric amplifiers and wavelength shifters. The final goal of our project is to demonstrate quantum correlations in beams generated through FWM in such MF in order to create a source of polarization-entangled photon pairs. Such a device operating near 800 nm could merge nicely with a rubidium based trapped-atom quantum memory.