Spatial entanglement and state engineering via four-photon Hong–Ou–Mandel interference

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The phenomenon of entanglement is the basis of quantum information and quantum communication processes. Entangled systems with a large number of photons are of great interest at present because they provide a platform for streaming technologies based on photonics. In this paper we present a device which operates with four-photons and based on the Hong–Ou–Mandel interference. The presented device allows to maximize the degree of spatial entanglement and generate the highly entangled four-dimensional Bell states. Furthermore, the use of the interferometer in different regimes leads to fast interference fringes in the coincidence probability with period of oscillations twice smaller than the pump wavelength. We have a good agreement between theoretical simulations and experimental results.</jats:p>