Improved production of entangled photon pairs (biphotons) via spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) is provided. In one aspect, forward-wave SPDC is performed in a monolithic resonator (resonant for both signal and idler) having a double pass pump geometry to provide a spectrally bright source of biphotons. In another aspect, backward-wave SPDC is performed in a resonator (resonant for both signal and idler) to provide a spectrally bright source of biphotons. For either of these approaches, the biphotons can be made to have polarization entanglement by using quasi phasematching (QPM) with two QPM periods simultaneously.