Polarization-entangled photon-pair generation in commercial-grade polarization-maintaining fiber

We demonstrate a fiber-based source of polarization-entangled photon pairs at visible wavelengths suitable for integration with local quantum-processing schemes. The photons are created through birefringent phase-matching in spontaneous four-wave mixing inside a Sagnac interferometer. We address entanglement due to temporal distinguishability of the photons to enable the generation of a spectrally unfiltered polarization-entangled photon-pair state with 95.86 +/- 0.10% fidelity to a maximally entangled Bell state, evaluated with a tomographic state reconstruction without applying any corrections or background subtractions. Owing to the large birefringence of the fiber, photons are created far detuned from the pump, where Raman contamination is negligible. This source's spatial mode and ability to produce spectrally uncorrelated photons make it suitable for implementing quantum information protocols over free-space and fiber-based networks. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America