Bright correlated twin-beam generation and radiation shaping in high-gain parametric down-conversion with anisotropy

Uniaxial anisotropy in nonlinear birefringent crystals limits the efficiency of nonlinear optical interactions and breaks the spatial symmetry of light generated in the parametric down-conversion (PDC) process. Therefore, this effect is usually undesirable and must be compensated for. However, high gain may be used to overcome the destructive role of anisotropy in order to generate bright two-mode correlated twin-beams. In this work, we provide a rigorous theoretical description of the spatial properties of bright squeezed light in the presence of strong anisotropy. We investigate a single crystal and a system of two crystals with an air gap (corresponding to a nonlinear SU(1,1) interferometer) and demonstrate the generation of bright correlated twin-beams in such configurations at high gain due to anisotropy. We explore the mode structure of the generated light and show how anisotropy, together with crystal spacing, can be used for radiation shaping.