Multiphoton entanglement from pulsed-pump spontaneous parametric down-conversion

G. Khoury

Hou Shun Poh, Chune Yang Lum, I. Marcikic +2 more

Polarization-entangled photon pairs can be efficiently prepared into pure Bell states with a high fidelity via type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) of narrow-band pump light. However, the use of femtosecond pump pulses to generate multiphoton states with precise timing often requires spectral filtering to maintain a high quality of polarization entanglement. This typically reduces the efficiency of photon pair collection. We experimentally map the polarization correlations of photon pairs from such a source over a range of down-converted wavelengths with a high spectral resolution and find strong polarization correlations everywhere. A spectrally dependent imbalance between contributions from the two possible decay paths of SPDC is identified as the reason for a reduction in entanglement quality observed with femtosecond pump pulses. Our spectral measurements allow us to predict the polarization correlations for arbitrary filter profiles when the frequency degree of freedom of the photon pairs is ignored.

Yoon-Ho Kim, S. P. Kulik, Yanhua H. Shih

Two spatially separated type-I nonlinear crystals are pumped by femtosecond laser pulses to create entangled photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The two-photon entangled state exhibits high-visibility quantum interference for both polarization and space-time variables without the need of stringent spectral postselection by using narrow-band filters. The visibility is insensitive to the thickness of the crystals, unlike in the case of pulse pumped type-II parametric down-conversion; therefore the intensity can be easily increased by using thick nonlinear crystals. This method will be indispensable in experiments that require a pulsed source of entangled photon pairs, such as generation of multiphoton entangled states, quantum teleportation, and quantum communications.

T. B. Pittman

Yu‐Hui Luo, Kam Tai Chan

Multiphoton entanglement in the same polarization has been theoretically shown to be obtainable by type-I spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), which can generate bright pulses more easily than type-II SPDC. A quantum cryptographic protocol utilizing photon number coding of the detected type-I entangled multiphotons is described. The information capacity versus photon number is calculated after considering the transmission loss inside the optical fiber and the detector efficiency, considering possible attacks to the scheme. The result thus achieved compares very favorably with all other schemes employing entanglement.

Logan Kaelbling