Physical Review A
Effect of spatial filtering on the Schmidt decomposition of entangled photons
Martin P. van Exter, Andrea Aiello, Sumant S. R. Oemrawsingh, Gerard Nienhuis, J. P. Woerdman
Abstract
A simple analytic decomposition of the spatially entangled two-photon field allows us to generalize the earlier results of Law and Eberly [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 127903 (2004)] to more realistic experimental geometries of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We quantify analytically how spatial filtering reduces the Schmidt number or dimensionality of the two-photon entanglement from a ``generated'' value to a generally much lower ``usable or detected'' value, for both collinear and noncollinear phase matching. We also discuss the intimate relation between the (two-photon) Schmidt number and the classical (one-photon) concept of etendue or geometric extent.