Polarization-entangled photon pairs have been widely used as a light source of quantum communication. The polarization-entangled photon pairs are generally obtained at the crossing points of the light cones that are generated from a type-II nonlinear crystal. However, it is hard to pick up the photon pairs coming out from the crossing points because of their invisible wavelength and low intensity. In our previous work, we succeeded in generating polarization-entangled photon pairs by overlapping two light paths for the photon-pair generation. The photon pairs could be entangled in all of the generated photon pairs without clipping the crossing points, even with some difficulty in its alignment to overlap the two light paths. In this paper, we have developed an optical system which generates polarization-entangled photon pairs using a beamlike photon pair, without the difficulty in alignment. The measured results show that the photon pairs generated in the system are entangled in their polarizations.

• Received 18 February 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.84.022301