Biphoton Generation in a Two-level Atomic Ensemble

We have theoretically studied the space-time entangled biphoton state generated from a two-level atomic system. In the photon counting measurement, the two-photon coincidence counting rate is a damped oscillation. The oscillation period is determined by the effective Rabi frequency and the damping rate is determined by the linewidth of the inhomogeneous-broadened ground state and the dipole dephasing rate. In an optical-pathway-balanced configuration, the two-photon temporal correlation shows an antibunching effect which corresponds to the interference between two types of nonlinear four-wave mixing processes occurring in such a two-level system. The visibility of the normalized second-order quantum coherence function g(2) (τ) increases along with the increase of the effective Rabi frequency, but has an upper limit at 45%. We find agreement between the theory and the experiments. © 2007 The American Physical Society.