  We present theoretical and experimental study of preparing maximally
entangled two-photon polarization states, or Bell states, using femtosecond
pulse pumped spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). First, we show how
the inherent distinguishability in femtosecond pulse pumped type-II SPDC can be
removed by using an interferometric technique without spectral and amplitude
post-selection. We then analyze the recently introduced Bell state preparation
scheme using type-I SPDC. Theoretically, both methods offer the same results,
however, type-I SPDC provides experimentally superior methods of preparing Bell
states in femtosecond pulse pumped SPDC. Such a pulsed source of highly
entangled photon pairs is useful in quantum communications, quantum
cryptography, quantum teleportation, etc.
