Spontaneous four-wave mixing (SpFWM) in fiber optics has been investigated due to its high photon-pair generation rate and negligible connection loss to fiber optic systems. Photon pairs generated in the fundamental or sideband modes satisfy SpFWM’s phase matching condition, and the pair-generation efficiency of both modes has been considered nearly identical. Here, we directly compare the pair-generation efficiency of the fundamental and sideband modes. Dispersion in optical fiber varies unevenly, and SpFWM in the sideband mode is more sensitive to the medium’s dispersion properties than in the fundamental mode, inducing lower pair-generation efficiency. These strong non-uniformity effects in the sideband mode will affect the photon-pair generation and four-wave mixing based quantum and nonlinear applications.

光纤中的自发四波混频 (SpFWM) 因其高光子对生成率和与光纤系统的连接损耗可忽略不计而受到研究。在基波或边带模式中生成的光子对满足 SpFWM 的相位匹配条件，并且两种模式的对生成效率几乎相同。在这里，我们直接比较了基带模式和边带模式的对生成效率。光纤中的色散变化不均匀，边带模式中的 SpFWM 对介质色散特性比基模中更敏感，从而导致较低的对生成效率。边带模式中的这些强非均匀性效应将影响光子对生成和基于四波混合的量子和非线性应用。