Spatial entanglement and optimal single-mode coupling

The challenge of optimizing the emission into single spatial modes of photons from spontaneous parametric down-conversion is addressed from the perspective of spatial entanglement. It is shown that single-mode coupling is most efficient in the absence of entanglement. Evidence of the relationship between spatial entanglement and pump focusing is revealed through experimental results, and numerical simulations show that spatial entanglement and single-mode coupling are optimized under nearly identical pump parameters.