Nonclassical properties of a contradirectional nonlinear optical coupler

•Nonclassicalities in fields propagating through a directional coupler is studied.•Completely quantum-mechanical description of the coupler is provided.•Analytic solutions of Heisenberg equations of motion for various modes are obtained.•Existence of lower order and higher order entanglement is shown.•Variation of nonclassicalities with phase-mismatch and coupling constants is studied.

We investigate the nonclassical properties of output fields propagated through a contradirectional asymmetric nonlinear optical coupler consisting of a linear waveguide and a nonlinear (quadratic) waveguide operated by second harmonic generation. In contrast to the earlier results, all the initial fields are considered weak and a completely quantum-mechanical model is used here to describe the system. Perturbative solutions of Heisenberg's equations of motion for various field modes are obtained using Sen–Mandal technique. Obtained solutions are subsequently used to show the existence of single-mode and intermodal squeezing, single-mode and intermodal antibunching, two-mode and multi-mode entanglement in the output of contradirectional asymmetric nonlinear optical coupler. Further, existence of higher order nonclassicality is also established by showing the existence of higher order antibunching, higher order squeezing and higher order entanglement. Variation of observed nonclassical characters with different coupling constants and phase mismatch is discussed.