The polarization state of biphoton light generated via colinear frequency-d
egenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion is considered. A biphoton
is described by a three-component polarization vector, its arbitrary transf
ormations relating to the SU(3) group. A subset of such transformations, av
ailable with retardation plates, is realized experimentally. In particular,
two biphoton beams, formed by colinearly polarized photons (type I) are tr
ansformed into a single biphoton beam formed by orthogonally polarized phot
ons (type II). Polarized biphotons are suggested as ternary analogs of two-
state quantum systems (qubits). [S1050-2947(99)51312-7].