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%. |
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Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
Crystals
Sensors
Optical engineering
Single mode fibers
Optical filters
Photon polarization
Laser crystals