Transverse distinguishability of entangled photons with arbitrarily shaped spatial near- and far-field distributions

Abstract

Entangled photons generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion inside a nonlinear crystal exhibit a complex spatial photon count distribution. A quantitative description of this distribution helps with the interpretation of experiments that depend on this structure. We developed a theoretical model and an accompanying numerical calculation that includes the effects of phase matching and the crystal properties to describe a wide range of spatial effects in two-photon experiments. The numerical calculation was tested against selected analytical approximations. We furthermore performed a double-slit experiment where we measured the visibility V and the distinguishability D and obtained $D^2+V^2=1.43$. The numerical model accurately predicts these experimental results.

10 pages, 10 figures

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• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in twin images
• Realization of the purely spatial Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in full-field images of spontaneous parametric down conversion
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Complementarity in single photon interference - the role of mode functions and vacuum fields