title: The Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer: a new procedure for alignment.
abstract: Two major requirements in the construction of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer are the alignment and length balancing of two optical paths. A new method is presented for meeting these requirements that requires no custom optics or expensive equipment. Using this method, a two photon interferometer sourced by degenerate noncollinear parametric photon pairs was aligned and the optical paths were balanced to within an average of 11.6 microm, yielding two-photon interference features with visibilities of approximately 0.9. The method is applicable to arbitrary noncollinear emission angles, including nondegenerate downconversion situations where the signal and idler emission angles differ.
authors.affiliation: National Physical Laboratory, Hampton Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 0LW, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.forename: J Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Cheung
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Chunnilall
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Dunn