Narrowband telecom band polarization-entangled photon source by superposed monolithic cavities

Abstract: A high-quality narrowband polarization-entangled source in the telecom band is preferred to avoid frequency dispersion for long-distance transmission in optical fibers and to efficiently couple with telecom band quantum memories. Here, we report narrowband, telecom-band, polarization-entangled photon pair generation based on the superposition of single-longitudinal-mode photon pairs from two monolithic nonlinear crystal cavities in a passively stable interferometer based on beam displacers. The photon pairs generated from the cavities exhibit a high coincidence to accidental coincidence ratio of 20000 and a bandwidth below 500 MHz. Two-photon polarization interference, Bell-inequality, and quantum state tomography are performed to indicate the high quality of the entangled source. The current configuration demonstrates greater stability than traditional free space cavity-enhanced polarization-entangled state generation, which is promising for quantum communication applications.