Abstract
Wave packet structure of biphoton states arising in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) is studied theoretically and experimentally, and its relation with entanglement is discussed. In theory, a new expression is found for the biphoton wave function, in which anisotropy of the crystal refractive index is properly taken into account. Under the conditions of the experiment we report, the anisotropy effects are shown to be very strong. A scheme, optimal for observing extremely narrow coincidence angular photon distributions is found to be that in which the plane containing both the laser axis and the optical axis of a crystal coincides with the observation plane. The opposite, commonly investigated, case is that when these two planes are orthogonal to each other. We show that in the optimal geometry the coincidence angular distribution can be almost 20 times narrower than in the traditional scheme of measurements, and about 10 times narrower than the pump. Narrowing of coincidence distributions in the optimal geometry is accompanied by broadening the single-particle distributions, and this broadening is stronger pronounced in the optimal than in the commonly used geometry. The ratio R of widths of the single-particle and coincidence distributions in the optimal geometry appears to be as large as about 100, and we interpret this as an appropriate evaluation of the degree of entanglement accumulated in biphoton states. The results described are obtained theoretically and perfectly confirmed experimentally.
© 2007 Optical Society of America
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