Ion-doped crystal-based compact devices capable of beam splitting and coupling are enthralling for a broad range of classical and quantum integrated photonics applications. In this work, we report on the fabrication of depressed-cladding waveguide 2D 2 × 2, 1 × 2 and 3D 3 × 3 directional couplers in Tm ${}^{3+}$ :YAG crystal by femtosecond laser writing. The performances of the couplers are characterized at 810 nm, showing single-mode guidance, polarization independence, finely matched splitting ratios. These results open up new opportunities in the beneficial fabrication of 3D circuits and devices in crystals.

The possibility of controlling interference in two spaced fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometers and maintaining a nearly ideal visibility has been demonstrated for the one-way quantum cryptography system directly in the key distribution process through a communication channel with a length of 50 km. It has been shown that the deviation of the visibility from ideal is certainly due to the detected difference between the numbers of 0’s and 1’s in the raw (sifted) key. For this reason, an interferometer can be balanced only in the quasi-singlephoton mode without the interruption of the process of key distribution by using the difference between the numbers of 0’s and 1’s in the raw key as an indicator of an error. The proposed approach reduces the balancing time and, furthermore, does not require additional exchanges through an open communication channel.

The Fedorov parameter, which is the operational measure of entanglement of a two-component quantum system, has been experimentally measured. The influence of the degree of noncollinearity of the source of entangled photon pairs on this parameter, which can vary widely depending on the experimental conditions, has been examined. The results are in complete agreement with the previously proposed analytical estimate.