Heralding of telecommunication photon pairs with a superconducting single photon detector

Experiments involving entangled photon pairs created via spontaneous parametric down conversion typically use wavelengths in the visible regime. The extension of a photonic quantum information link to a fiber optical network requires that entangled pairs be created at telecommunication wavelengths (1550 nm), for which photon counting detector technology is inferior to visible detection, in particular, low coincidence detection rates of correlated-photon pairs. We demonstrate a correlated-photon pair measurement using the superconducting single photon detector in a heralding scheme that can be used to substantially improve the correlated-photon detection rate. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.