Conditional preparation of maximal polarization entanglement

A simple experimental setup consisting of a spontaneous parametric down-conversion source and passive linear optics is proposed for conditional preparation of a maximally entangled polarization state of two photons. Successful preparation is unambiguously heralded by coincident detection of four auxiliary photons. The proposed scheme utilizes the down-conversion term corresponding to the generation of three pairs of photons. We analyze imperfect detection of the auxiliary photons and demonstrate that its deleterious effect on the fidelity of the prepared state can be suppressed at the cost of decreasing the efficiency of the scheme.