Polarization entanglement generation at 1.5 um based on walk-off effect due to fiber birefringence

Abstract

In this Letter, a linear scheme to generate polarization entanglement at 1.5 um based on commercial polarization maintained dispersion shifted fiber (PM-DSF) is proposed. The birefringent walk-off effect of the pulsed pump light in the PM-DSF provides an effective way to suppress the vector scattering processes of spontaneous four wave mixing. A 90 degree offset of fiber polarization axes is introduced at the midpoint of the fiber to realize the quantum superposition of the two correlated photon states generated by the two scalar processes on different fiber polarization axes, leading to polarization entanglement generation. Experiments of the indistinguishable property on single side and two-photon interference in two non-orthogonal polarization bases are demonstrated. A two photon interference fringe visibility of 89\pm3% is achieved without subtracting the background counts, demonstrating its great potential in developing highly efficient and stable fiber based polarization-entangled quantum light source at optical communication band.