arXiv:1002.4226 · Applied Physics Letters
Performance of hybrid entanglement photon pair source for quantum key distribution
Mikio Fujiwara, Morio Toyoshima, Masahide Sasaki, K. Yoshino, Y. Nambu, Akihisa Tomita
Abstract
We report on the experimental demonstration of a source of hybrid entanglement pairs between two different degrees of freedom, a 1550 nm time-bin qubit and an 810 nm polarization qubit. The polarization qubit at 810 nm is transformed by an asymmetric Mach–Zehnder interferometer consisted of a Glan laser prism and a polarization-maintaining fiber. We obtained visibilities of 95.8% and 88% with tolerance ±0.2% and ±1% along Z-Z and X-X axes on the Poincare sphere, respectively, with a coincidence count rate of more than 800 c/s after entanglement format transformation. These values are well above the threshold of 70.7% needed to violate a Bell inequality and allow distilling a secure key in the quantum key distribution.