Theory of cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric downconversion

Abstract: In this paper we study photon pairs generated in a nonlinear cavity, composed of a nonlinear crystal surrounded by mirrors, by the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion. We analyze two different regimes: singly-resonant cavities where the signal and idler modes are resonant, and doubly-resonant cavities where the pump mode is also resonant. We present analytic expressions for the joint spectral amplitude in these two cases, and study the reduction in emission bandwidth as the cavity coefficient finesse is increased. We also study the enhancement of the source brightness resulting from the presence of the cavity.