This thesis describes the design, development, and implementation of a pulsed source of polarization-entangled photons using spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a Sagnac interferometer. A tangle of 0.9286 ± 0.0015, fidelity to the state (|10〉 + |01〉)/√2 of
0.9798 ± 0.0004 and a brightness of 597 pairs/s/mW were demonstrated.
Spontaneous parametric down-conversion is a nonlinear optical process in which one photon is split into two lower-frequency photons while conserving momentum and energy, in this
experiment nearly degenerate photons are produced. These photons are then interfered at the output beamsplitter of the interferometer, exchanging path entanglement for polarization entanglement and generating the desired polarization-entangled photon pairs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:WATERLOO/oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/4259 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Smith, Devin Hugh |
| Source Sets | University of Waterloo Electronic Theses Repository |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
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