Shaping the joint spectrum of down-converted photons through optimized custom poling

We present a scheme for engineering the joint spectrum of photon pairs created via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Our method relies on customizing the poling configuration of a quasi-phase-matched crystal. We use simulated annealing to find an optimized poling configuration which allows almost arbitrary shaping of the crystal's phase-matching function. This has direct application in the creation of pure single photons---currently one of the most important goals of single-photon quantum optics. We describe the general algorithm and provide code, written in C++, that outputs an optimized poling configuration given specific experimental parameters.