Modelling spontaneous four-wave mixing in periodically tapered waveguides

A periodically tapered waveguides technique is an emerging potential route to establish quasi-phase-matching schemes in third-order nonlinear materials for efficient on-demand parametric interactions. In this paper, I investigate this method in enhancing spontaneous photon-pair emission in microstructured fibres and planar waveguides with sinusoidally varying cross sections. To study this process for continuous and pulsed-pump excitations, I have developed a general robust quantum model that takes into account self- and cross-phase modulations. The model shows a great enhancement in photon-pair generation in waveguides with a small number of tapering periods that are feasible via the current fabrication technologies. I envisage that this work will open a new area of research to investigate how the tapering patterns can be fully optimised to tailor the spectral properties of the output photons in nonlinear guided structures.