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arXiv:1409.5747 · Physical Review Letters

Measuring the Biphoton Temporal Wave Function with Polarization-Dependent and Time-Resolved Two-Photon Interference

Peng Chen, Chi Shu, Xianxin Guo, M. M. T. Loy, Shengwang Du

Published Jan 6, 2015• 51 citations
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Abstract

We propose and demonstrate an approach to measuring the biphoton temporal wave function with polarization-dependent and time-resolved two-photon interference. Through six sets of two-photon interference measurements projected onto different polarization subspaces, we can reconstruct the amplitude and phase functions of the biphoton temporal waveform. For the first time, we apply this technique to experimentally determine the temporal quantum states of the narrow-band biphotons generated from the spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.114.010401

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Publisher’s Note: Measuring the Biphoton Temporal Wave Function with Polarization-Dependent and Time-Resolved Two-Photon Interference [Phys. Rev. Lett.114, 010401 (2015)]

Peng Chen, Chi Shu, Xianxin Guo +2 more

Received 8 January 2015DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.039903© 2015 American Physical Society

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We propose and demonstrate an approach to measuring the biphoton temporal wave function with polarization-dependent and time-resolved two-photon interference. Through six sets of two-photon interference measurements projected onto different polarization subspaces, we can reconstruct the amplitude and phase functions of the biphoton temporal waveform. For the first time, we apply this technique to experimentally determine the temporal quantum states of the narrow-band biphotons generated from the spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atoms.
We demonstrate a technique of quantum-state tomography for measuring the complex temporal wave function of narrowband biphotons with polarization-dependent and time-resolved two-photon interference. While the amplitude function of the biphoton waveform is directly related to the second-order correlation function which is determined by the two-photon coincidence measurement, the phase function is retrieved from six sets of time-resolved two-photon interference measurements projected onto different polarization subspaces. We apply this technique to experimentally reconstruct the temporal quantum states of the narrow-band biphotons generated from the spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atoms. As compared with the homodyne detection, our method doesn't require any external phase reference.
We describe and demonstrate a quantum state tomography for measuring the complex temporal waveform of narrowband biphotons. Through six sets of two-photon interference measurements projected in different polarization subspaces, we can construct the time-frequency entangled twophoton joint amplitude and phase functions in continuous-variable time domain. For the first time, we apply this technique to experimentally determine the temporal quantum states of narrowband biphotons generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atoms, and fully confirm the theoretical predictions.
The wavefunction of two identical bosons remains invariant under particle exchange - a fundamental quantum symmetry that underlies Bose-Einstein statistics. We report the direct experimental observation of bosonic exchange symmetry in the temporal wavefunction of photon pairs generated via spontaneous four-wave mixing in a three-level cold atomic ensemble. The measured two-photon temporal correlations show excellent agreement with theoretical predictions based on symmetrized bosonic wavefunctions. In addition, we perform time-resolved two-photon interference to reconstruct the complex temporal wavefunction. Both the amplitude and phase profiles exhibit clear symmetry under photon exchange, providing a direct confirmation of bosonic exchange symmetry in the time domain.
The temporal purity of single photons is crucial to the indistinguishability of independent photon sources for the fundamental study of the quantum nature of light and the development of photonic technologies. Currently, the technique for single photons heralded from time-frequency entangled biphotons created in nonlinear crystals does not guarantee the temporal-quantum purity, except using spectral filtering. Nevertheless, an entirely different situation is anticipated for narrow-band biphotons with a coherence time far longer than the time resolution of a single-photon detector. Here we demonstrate temporally pure single photons with a coherence time of 100 ns, directly heralded from the time-frequency entangled biphotons generated by spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atomic ensembles, without any supplemented filters or cavities. A near-perfect purity and indistinguishability are both verified through Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference using single photons from two independent cold atomic ensembles. The time-frequency entanglement provides a route to manipulate the pure temporal state of the single-photon source.