Spatial two-photon coherence of the entangled field produced by down-conversion using a partially spatially coherent pump beam

We study the spatial coherence properties of the entangled two-photon field produced by parametric down-conversion (PDC) when the pump field is, spatially, a partially coherent beam. By explicitly treating the case of a pump beam of the Gaussian Schell-model type, we show that in PDC the spatial coherence properties of the pump field get entirely transferred to the spatial coherence properties of the down-converted two-photon field. As one important consequence of this study, we find that, for two-qubit states based on the position correlations of the two-photon field, the maximum achievable entanglement, as quantified by concurrence, is bounded by the degree of spatial coherence of the pump field. These results could be important by providing a means of controlling the entanglement of down-converted photons by tailoring the degree of coherence of the pump field. ©2010 The American Physical Society