1 Long-Distance Distribution of Time-Bin Entanglement Generated in a Cooled Fiber
Abstract
This paper reports the first demonstration of the generation and distribution of entangled photon pairs in the 1.5-µm band using spontaneous four-wave mixing in a cooled fiber. Noise photons induced by spontaneous Raman scattering were suppressed by cooling a dispersion shifted fiber with liquid nitrogen, which resulted in a significant improvement in the visibility of two-photon interference. By using this scheme, time-bin entangled qubits were successfully distributed over 60 km of optical fiber with a visibility of 76%, which was obtained without removing accidental coincidences. 2 The entangled states of quantum particles constitute the quintessential feature of quantum mechanics because they highlight its non-locality most vividly [1]. Moreover, entanglements form the basis of quantum information, and facilitate such applications as quantum key distribution (QKD) [2, 3], quantum teleportation [4], and quantum repeaters [5]. Of the many forms of entanglement, entangled photons are important because they are suitable for distributing quantum information over long distances. Although several good sources are available in the short wavelength band [6, 7], an entangled photon-pair source in the 1.5-µm band is needed if we