Science
In reply to the discussion: Quantum Entanglement, Dark Counts, Coincidence Detection [View all]mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)Ebay is awesome for a lot of stuff: the optic breadboard, posts, translation and rotation stages, and of course blu-ray laser diodes are $50 for a quarter watt.
For making mounts and such, I have a milling machine from Sherline, and that thing is really helpful. I've had to learn machining on my own, so I can't make anything complicated, but it's enough.
The BBO will be two crystals oriented 90 degrees from each other, so the photons get entangled in polarization as well, although I don't need that for this experiment. It will be about $1000. The detectors, as mentioned before will be seriously expensive. Pe4rkin-Elmer is now Excelitas - might have the spelling wrong. For detectors with a dark count of 250, they're over $4k. The are versions with higher dark counts that are a lot less expensive. One reason I am asking about entanglement and detection rates is that I want to figure out how good/expensive a set of detectors I will need.
But yeah, Ebay seriously kicks ass for most of the stuff.