We present a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration of a reconfigurable entanglement distribution scheme utilizing a poled fiber-based source of broadband polarization-entangled photon pairs and dense wavelength-division multiplexing. A large
bandwidth (> 90 nm, centered at 1555 nm) and highly spectrally correlated nature of the entangled source can be exploited to allow for the generation of more than 25 frequency-conjugate entangled pairs when aligned to the standard 200 GHz ITU grid. In this work, three frequency-conjugate entangled pairs are used to demonstrate quantum key distribution, with the wavelength-selective switching done manually. The entangled pairs are delivered over 40 km of actual fiber, and an estimated secure key rate of up to 20 bits/s per bi-party is obtained.
We experimentally demonstrate a simple method to measure the biphoton joint spectrum by mapping the spectral information onto the temporal domain using a dispersive medium. Various top-hat spectral filters are used to limit the spectral (and hence, t
emporal) extent of the broadband downconversion photons measured. The sharp edges of the spectral filters are utilized as spectral markers for dispersion characterization of the dispersive medium. This method allows dispersion characterization and joint spectral measurement to be completed simultaneously. The joint spectrum (which extends beyond 100 nm, centered about 1.5 micron) of the type-II downconverted photon pairs generated from a poled optical fiber is obtained with this method.
