Generation of polarization-entangled photon pairs and violation of Bell’s inequality using spontaneous four-wave mixing in a fiber loop

We report the generation of polarization entangled photon pairs in the 1550-nm wavelength band using spontaneous four-wave mixing in a dispersion-shifted fiber loop. The use of the fiber-loop configuration made it possible to generate polarization entangled states very stably. With accidental coincidences subtracted, we obtained coincidence fringes with $>90\%$ visibilities, and observed a violation of Bell’s inequality by seven standard deviations. We also confirmed the preservation of the quantum correlation between the photons even after they had been separated by 20 km of optical fiber.

Figure 1

Schematic diagram of proposed method.

Figure 2

Experimental setup.

Figure 3

(a) Coincidence rate per signal count as a function of ${\theta }_1$. (b) Coincidence rate per signal count as a function of ${\theta }_1$ after the signal and idler photons had been separated by 20 km of optical fiber. Circles, ${\theta }_2=0°$; squares, ${\theta }_2=45°$.