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European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

Compact source of polarization-entangled photon pairs

Pavel Trojek, Mohamed Bourennane, Christian Kurtsiefer, Harald Weinfurter

Published Jan 1, 2003• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A compact source of polarization-entangled photon pairs is developed using a blue single-mode laser diode (/spl lambda/ = 402 nm, P = 30 mW) as the pump source of a beta-barium-borate (BBO) nonlinear optical crystal . Using the technique to optimize the collection efficiency, the created photon pairs are coupled into single-mode optical fibers, which are directly connected to quenched silicon avalanche photodiodes (Si APDs). The entanglement of the generated photon pairs was tested with the measurement of the polarization correlations in H/V and +45/spl deg// -45/spl deg/ basis and by violating the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH)-type Bell inequality. This compact, robust and economic source can be employed in any application of quantum information and quantum communication, in particular in practicable entanglement based quantum key distribution.

DOI
10.1109/eqec.2003.1314235

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A compact source of polarization-entangled photon pairs is developed using a blue single-mode laser diode (/spl lambda/ = 402 nm, P = 30 mW) as the pump source of a beta-barium-borate (BBO) nonlinear optical crystal . Using the technique to optimize the collection efficiency, the created photon pairs are coupled into single-mode optical fibers, which are directly connected to quenched silicon avalanche photodiodes (Si APDs). The entanglement of the generated photon pairs was tested with the measurement of the polarization correlations in H/V and +45/spl deg// -45/spl deg/ basis and by violating the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH)-type Bell inequality. This compact, robust and economic source can be employed in any application of quantum information and quantum communication, in particular in practicable entanglement based quantum key distribution.
A small, portable, high-flux correlated photon-pair source has been designed and constructed from simple opto-mechanical parts. Unique to this device is its straightforward alignment process, together with the direct coupling of signal and idler photons into polarization-maintaining single-mode optical fibers. Spontaneous parametric down-conversion is used to produce photon pairs in β-barium borate (BBO) at a center wavelength of 810 nm. Owing to the applied type-I phase-matching, coincident photons have identical polarization. The estimated fiber-coupling efficiency is 51%, the measured photon and coincidence flux are 636 and 130 kHz/mW, respectively, normalized to pump power (44 mW). The source has an extremely wide wavelength spectrum of 202-nm FWHM, measured at the fiber output, which limits the actual heralding ratio to 20%.
We construct a compact polarization-entangled photon source using type-II degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in beta-barium borate (BBO) crystal pumped by a 405 nm violet laser diode. In order to compensate the spatial displacement and the temporal delay due to the birefringence and dispersion effect of signal and idler photons, we make the down-converted photon pairs pass through a half wave plate and an additional BBO crystal with the half thickness of the original one. This improves the visibility of two-photon interference by eliminating the distinguishability of the paired photons. We measure the polarization correlations by two adjustable polarization analyzers in two conjugate bases, H/V and +45°/-45°, respectively. The polarization analyzer consists of a polarization beam splitter cube preceded by a rotatable half wave plate. When rotating one of the half wave plates and keeping the other one at fixed angle, we obtain the expected sin2 dependence of the coincidence counts. The highly visible sinusoidal coincidence indicates the violation of the Bell inequality and demonstrates the high quality of the polarization-entangled photon source. This compact polarization-entangled photon source is easily configurable and robust to demonstrate optical quantum information processing.
We report a Bell state preparation experiment using polarization-entangled photon pairs which are produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion of a 405 nm pulse laser beam inside two orthogonally oriented 0.1 mm beta-barium borate nonlinear crystals with Type-I phased matching. The degree and phase of all four Bell states are easily tunable. With two-photon interference visibilities in excess of 85%, we observe that the Bell parameter S for any of the four Bell states exceeds the classical limit in the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt form of Bell inequality by five standard deviations.
Photon entanglement has appeared to play a crucial role in the foundation of quantum physics and in the ever-increasing requirements of quantum information processing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and quantum computing. Thus, the industrial development and the characterization of practical entangled photon sources at telecom wavelengths are key element for the deployment of emerging quantum applications, such as Quantum Key Distribution. The photon source is based on a 775 nm pumped type II Periodically Poled Lithium Niobate wave guide (PPLN_WG) designed for generation of orthogonally polarized photon pairs at 1550 nm. Picometer tunability of the converted central wavelength is achieved by using an accurate temperature control of both the PPLN_WG and the laser diode. All optical and electronics elements are embedded in a compact module. This practical photon source is driven by a USB communication port compatible with computer. The main characteristics of the photon source, Coincidence-to-Accidental-Ratio (CAR), brightness, bi-photon spectrum, heralded efficiency, purity, and indistinguishability are measured by using integrated optical benches and a 2-channels very-low-noise InGaAs single photon avalanche counters (G-SPAD). The proposed photon source measurements protocol is also available for the characterization of other photon sources technologies, such as for the Quantum Dots and semiconductor photon sources. We performed two experimental Bell inequality violations by creating polarization entanglement or by using the natural frequency entanglement of our source. Violation by more than five standard deviations Bell inequalities with our setups demonstrate that our photon source is a promising tool for the realization of various distances quantum information experiments.
We present a polarization-entangled photon pair source operating in the visible light range around 532 nm. Employing a collinear crossed-crystal scheme with type-I degenerate phase matching in barium borate (BBO), our source achieves a brightness of 9.5 k pairs/s/mW and a quantum state fidelity of 98.3%, making it a candidate for integration in microscopes and make use of the advantages of mid-visible optimized single-photon detection technologies. In order to study potential applications, we present a trade-off between source brightness and polarization entanglement visibility and propose use cases for different filtering configurations of the source, capable of a brightness up to 1.23 M pairs/s/mW.
We report on the construction of polarization-entangled photon sources for quantum key distribution (QKD) testbed using nonlinear optical process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) pumped by a 266-nm and 351-nm continuous wave (cw) and a 415-nm femtosecond-pulsed laser sources. The efficient coupling of down-converted photons at 702 nm and 830 nm into optical single-mode fiber has enabled us to increase the rate of entangled-photon pairs available for transmission over communication channels with a high degree of polarization entanglement. The detection and characterization of the entangled-photon-state properties has been performed using commercially available Silicon avalanche photodiodes (APD) as well as using a novel photon-number-resolving cryogenic photodetector, which has been developed by our colleagues at the Boulder Division of NIST and brought to BU for tests with elements of the future DARPA Quantum Network.