Highly bright photon-pair generation in Doppler-broadened ladder-type atomic system.

We report a bright photon-pair source with a coincidence counting rate per input power (cps/mW) of tens of thousands, obtained via spontaneous four-wave mixing from a Doppler-broadened atomic ensemble of the 5S_1/2-5P_3/2-5D_5/2 transition of ⁸⁷Rb. The photon-pair generation rate is enhanced by the two-photon coherence contributions from almost all the atomic velocity groups in the Doppler-broadened ladder-type atomic system. We obtained the violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality by a factor of 2370 ± 150. We believe that our scheme for highly bright paired photons is important as a useful quantum light source for quantum entanglement swapping between completely autonomous sources.