Visible-wavelength polarization-entangled photon source for quantum communication and imaging

Abstract

We present a polarization-entangled photon pair source operating in the visible light range around 532 nm. Employing a collinear crossed-crystal scheme with type-I degenerate phase matching in barium borate (BBO), our source achieves a brightness of 9.5 k pairs/s/mW and a quantum state fidelity of 98.3%, making it a candidate for integration in microscopes and make use of the advantages of mid-visible optimized single-photon detection technologies. In order to study potential applications, we present a trade-off between source brightness and polarization entanglement visibility and propose use cases for different filtering configurations of the source, capable of a brightness up to 1.23 M pairs/s/mW.