High-fidelity polarization-entangled photons are a powerful resource for quantum communication, distributing entanglement and quantum teleportation. Sagnac sources offer intrinsic phase stability, compact footprint and high collection efficiency as no generated photons are discarded. To-date, however, Sagnac sources have failed to reach the Bell-CHSH S parameter values measured with traditional cone sources. Here, we present a Sagnac polarization-entangled source with 2 2 − S = ( 5.65 ± 0.57 ) × 10 − 3 , over an order of magnitude closer to the Tsirelson bound than previously reported. Our source records 0.995 ± 0.001 concurrence, 0.9974 ± 0.0007 fidelity to an ideal Bell state and is around two orders of magnitude brighter than the highest S parameter cone source. By studying errors in Sagnac sources, we identify that multi-pair generation and the nonlinear crystal position have the greatest impact on the S parameter in our experiment. We provide a clear pathway of improving Sagnac sources that could enable the highest S parameters measured to-date.
High-fidelity polarization-entangled photons are a powerful resource for quantum communication, distributing entanglement and quantum teleportation. The Bell-CHSH inequality S\leq2 S ≤ 2 is violated by bipartite entanglement and only maximally entangled states can achieve S=2\sqrt{2} S = 2 2 , the Tsirelson bound. Spontaneous parametric down-conversion sources can produce entangled photons with correlations close to the Tsirelson bound. Sagnac configurations offer intrinsic stability, compact footprint and high collection efficiency, however, there is often a trade off between source brightness and entanglement visibility. Here, we present a Sagnac polarization-entangled source with 2\sqrt{2}-S=(5.65\pm0.57\times10^{-3}) 2 2 − S = ( 5.65 ± 0.57 × 10 − 3 ) , on-par with the highest S S parameters recorded, while generating and detecting (4660\pm70)pairs/s/mW ( 4660 ± 70 ) p a i r s / s / m W , which is a substantially higher brightness than previously reported for Sagnac sources and around two orders of magnitude brighter than for traditional cone sources with the highest S S parameters. Our source records 0.9953\pm0.0003 0.9953 ± 0.0003 concurrence and 0.99743\pm0.00014 0.99743 ± 0.00014 fidelity to an ideal Bell state. By studying systematic errors in Sagnac sources, we identify that the precision of the collection focal point inside the crystal plays the largest role in reducing the S S parameter in our experiment. We provide a pathway that could enable the highest S S parameter recorded with a Sagnac source to-date while maintaining very high brightness.
Entangled photons are crucial for the development of quantum technologies and especially important in quantum communications. Hence it is paramount to have a reliable, high-fidelity source of entangled photons. Here we describe the construction and characterization of a polarization-entangled photon source. We generate maximally-entangled Bell states using a type-II PPKTP nonlinear crystal inside a Sagnac interferometer. We characterize the source in terms of brightness, visibility, Bell-CHSH test and we perform quantum-state tomography of the density matrix. Our source violates Bell-CHSH inequality
∣S∣≤2 by
n=22 standard deviations. With visibilities up to
V=98.9% and fidelity
F=97%, our source is highly competitive, with state-of-the-art performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first source of entangled-photons designed and build in Romania and as such, represents an important step for the development of quantum technologies in our country. We envisage that our results will stimulate the progress of quantum technologies in Romania and will educate the future generation of quantum engineers.
We develop a Sagnac-type source of ultrabright, non-degenerate, polarization-entangled photon pair that is highly stable and compact simultaneously. We use a
20 mm long PPLN bulk crystal which, upon pumping continuously with
532 nm wavelength, produces polarization-entangled photon-pairs of
785 nm signal and
1651 nm idler wavelengths via the type-0 spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process. All optical components used in the setup are off-the-shelf components, readily available commercially; hence, no custom-designed or costly multi-wavelength polarization optics are required. At the same time, long-term phase stability is achieved without any additional active stabilization; due to the geometry of our Sagnac-type design. We also report one of the highest brightness of non-degenerate polarization-entangled photon pairs available in the literature. Even with a very low pump power of
0.034 mW, we detect a coincidence rate of
(6.96±0.03)×104 entangled pairs/sec/mW (averaged over three polarization-basis measurements: H/V, D/A, and R/L basis). The source's brightness is calculated to be
(6.17±0.04)×106 entangled pairs/sec/mW for the signal line width of
0.4 nm. From the raw coincidence counts (without any background coincidence correction), the fidelity of the entangled state is measured to be
(96.72±0.01)% with a concurrence of
(94.68±0.20)%. Bell-CHSH inequality violation is reported as
S=2.71±0.06.
We demonstrate a compact, practical all-fiber source of non-degenerate telecom-band polarization-entangled photon pairs assembled from off-the-shelf components. The compact fiber-integrated architecture is designed to be affordable, straightforward to assemble and align, and compatible with existing optical-fiber infrastructure. Photon pairs are generated through type-0 spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a pigtailed periodically poled lithium-niobate waveguide embedded in a Sagnac interferometer. At 0.5 mW pump power, quantum-state tomography yields a Bell-state fidelity
FΦ−=0.850, purity
P=0.836, and concurrence
C=0.782. A separate CHSH measurement gives
S=2.3301±0.0075. The measured Bell-state fidelity is sufficient for the reconstructed polarization state to support qubit teleportation above the classical fidelity limit under ideal protocol operations. Analysis of the density matrix shows that approximately 96.7% of the population remains in the desired
∣HH⟩-
∣VV⟩ subspace, with a normalized coherence of approximately 0.86. A residual relative-phase offset indicates that local phase compensation could increase the Bell-state fidelity to approximately 0.8865. We further characterize the brightness--quality trade-off and obtain a corrected pair-rate slope of
(0.918±0.040) Mcps mW
−1. The broadband emission and fiber interfaces offer a route to multiuser entanglement distribution through off-the-shelf multichannel wavelength-division multiplexers with passbands matched to the signal and idler wavelengths.
We demonstrate a compact and stable source of polarization-entangled pairs of photons, one at 810 nm wavelength for high detection efficiency and the other at 1550 nm for long-distance fiber communication networks. Due to a novel Sagnac-based design of the interferometer no active stabilization is needed. Using only one 30 mm ppKTP bulk crystal the source produces photons with a spectral brightness of 1.13 x 10(6) pairs/s/mW/THz with an entanglement fidelity of 98.2%. Both photons are single-mode fiber coupled and ready to be used in quantum key distribution (QKD) or transmission of photonic quantum states over large distances.
Using the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a two-crystal geometry, we have generated a source of polarization-entangled photon pairs that is more than ten times brighter, per unit of pump power, than previous sources, with another factor of 30 to 75 expected to be readily achievable. We have measured a high level of entanglement between photons emitted over a relatively large collection angle, and over a 10-nm bandwidth. As a demonstration of the source capabilities, we obtained a 242-\ensuremath{\sigma} violation of Bell's inequalities in less than three minutes, and observed near-perfect photon correlations when the collection efficiency was reduced. In addition, both the degree of entanglement and the state purity should be readily tunable.