Efficient generation and characterization of spectrally factorable biphotons.

Spectrally unentangled biphotons with high single-spatiotemporal-mode purity are highly desirable for many quantum information processing tasks. We generate biphotons with an inferred heralded-state spectral purity of 99%, the highest to date without any spectral filtering, by pulsed spontaneous parametric downconversion in a custom-fabricated periodically-poled KTiOPO4 crystal under extended Gaussian phase-matching conditions. To efficiently characterize the joint spectral intensity of the generated biphotons at high spectral resolution, we employ a commercially available dispersion compensation module (DCM) with a dispersion equivalent to 100 km of standard optical fiber and with an insertion loss of only 2.8 dB. Compared with the typical method of using two temperature-stabilized equal-length fibers that incurs an insertion loss of 20 dB per fiber, the DCM approach achieves high spectral resolution in a much shorter measurement time. Because the dispersion amount and center wavelengths of DCMs can be easily customized, spectral characterization in a wide range of quantum photonic applications should benefit significantly from this technique.