Compact Engineering of Path-Entangled Sources from a Monolithic Quadratic Nonlinear Photonic Crystal

An integrated realization of photonic entangled states becomes an inevitable tendency toward integrated quantum optics. Here we report the compact engineering of steerable photonic path-entangled states from a monolithic quadratic nonlinear photonic crystal. The crystal acts as a coherent beam splitter to distribute photons into designed spatial modes, producing the heralded single-photon and appealing beamlike two-photon path entanglement. We characterize the path entanglement by implementing quantum spatial beating experiments. Such a multifunctional entangled source can be further extended to the high-dimensional fashion and multiphoton level, which paves a desirable way to engineering miniaturized quantum light sources.