Building and Entangled Photon Pair Source
By Steven Lu, Lucas Marschoun
Photon pair sources are fundamental for quantum computing, optics, instrumentation, and experimentation, with numerous applications such as imaging cells and quantum key distribution. Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (SPDC) is the most common and mature process used today to generate entangled photon pairs. It uses a non-linear crystal to produce spin entangled photon pairs (signal and idler) from a photon beam (pump). Our goal is to build a source that exhibits Type-I SPDC and use it to experimentally test Bell's inequality. Bell's inequalities are a set of inequalities that when violated, contradict the local hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics. In our case, we would aim to find a discrepancy between the predicted and actual quantities of photons produced from our emitter that pass through a pair of optical polarizers. In our project we work through setting up the various components of the photon emitter and aligning it.
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