title: Broadband photon pair generation in green fluorescent proteins through spontaneous four-wave mixing.
abstract: Recent studies in quantum biology suggest that quantum mechanics help us to explore quantum processes in biological system. Here, we demonstrate generation of photon pairs through spontaneous four-wave mixing process in naturally occurring fluorescent proteins. We develop a general empirical method for analyzing the relative strength of nonlinear optical interaction processes in five different organic fluorophores. Our results indicate that the generation of photon pairs in green fluorescent proteins is subject to less background noises than in other fluorophores, leading to a coincidence-to-accidental ratio ~145. As such proteins can be genetically engineered and fused to many biological cells, our experiment enables a new platform for quantum information processing in a biological environment such as biomimetic quantum networks and quantum sensors.
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3112 USA.
authors.forename: Siyuan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3112 USA.
authors.forename: Abu
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3112 USA.
authors.forename: Neil V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Corzo
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3112 USA.
authors.forename: Prem
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA.
authors.forename: Yuping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3112 USA.
authors.forename: Kim Fook
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D049408:Luminescent Agents / Q000378:metabolism*; D055620:Optical Phenomena; D017785:Photons
chemical_list: D049408:Luminescent Agents; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins