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Wire-grid polarisers are versatile and scalable components which can be engineered to achieve small sizes and extremely high extinction ratios. Yet the measured performances are always significantly below the predicted values obtained from numerical simulations. Here we report on a detailed comparison between theoretical and experimental performances. We show that the discrepancy can be explained by the true shape of the plasmonic structures. Taking into account the fabrication details, a new optimisation model enables us to achieve excellent agreement with the observed response and to re-optimise the grating parameters to ensure experimental extinction ratios well above 1,000 at 850 nm.

We present a simple but highly efficient source of polarization-entangled photons based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in bulk periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate crystals (PPKTP) pumped by a 405 nm laser diode. Utilizing one of the highest available nonlinear coefficients in a non-degenerate, collinear type-0 phase-matching configuration, we generate polarization entanglement via the crossed-crystal scheme and detect 0.64 million photon pair events/s/mW, while maintaining an overlap fidelity with the ideal Bell state of 0.98 at a pump power of 0.025 mW., (© 2012 Optical Society of America)

We present a fully integrated, ready-for-use quantum random number generator (QRNG) whose stochastic model is based on the randomness of detecting single photons in attenuated light. We show that often annoying deadtime effects associated with photomultiplier tubes (PMT) can be utilized to avoid postprocessing for bias or correlations. The random numbers directly delivered to a PC, generated at a rate of up to 50 Mbit/s, clearly pass all tests relevant for (physical) random number generators.

We present an entangled-state quantum cryptography system that operated for the first time in a real-world application scenario. The full key generation protocol was performed in real-time between two distributed embedded hardware devices, which were connected by 1.45 km of optical fiber, installed for this experiment in the Vienna sewage system. The generated quantum key was immediately handed over and used by a secure communication application.

We present a compact source of polarization-entangled photon pairs at a wavelength of 805 nm using a violet single-mode laser diode as the pump source of type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The source exhibits entanglement and pair-rate comparable to conventional systems utilizing large frame ion lasers thus significantly increases the practicality of novel quantum information or quantum metrology applications.

We report the realization of a three-path Mach-Zehnder interferometer using single-mode fibers and two integrated 3 x 3 fiber couplers. We observed enhanced phase sensitivity, as compared with two-path interferometers, with a visibility of the interference pattern of more than 97%. This interferometer has an analog in two-photon interferometry, and we believe it to be the first nontrivial example of N x N multiport interferometers.