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arXiv:1805.01787

Coherence and visibility in Fano interferometers

Fabian Lauble, Jörg Evers

Published May 4, 2018• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Interferometry is an indispensable tool across all the natural sciences. Recently, a new type of interferometer based on phase-sensitive Fano resonances has been proposed and implemented. In these Fano interferometers, the two arms are formed by a spectrally broad continuum channel, and a spectrally narrow resonant bound state scattering channel, respectively. We show that the textbook relation between interference visibility and coherence known from double-slit- or Mach-Zehnder-interferometers does not apply to Fano interferometers, because the physical origin of the interference extrema is different. We then show how instead the asymmetry of Fano spectra can be exploited to quantify coherence in Fano interferometers.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1805.01787

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Interferometry is an indispensable tool across all the natural sciences. Recently, a new type of interferometer based on phase-sensitive Fano resonances has been proposed and implemented. In these Fano interferometers, the two arms are formed by a spectrally broad continuum channel, and a spectrally narrow resonant bound state scattering channel, respectively. We show that the textbook relation between interference visibility and coherence known from double-slit- or Mach-Zehnder-interferometers does not apply to Fano interferometers, because the physical origin of the interference extrema is different. We then show how instead the asymmetry of Fano spectra can be exploited to quantify coherence in Fano interferometers.
We achieve Fano-like resonances in an all-in-fiber structure embedded with an in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). A fiber Bragg grating is inserted into MZI's one arm to form a resonance, which functions as the discrete state of the Fano-like resonance to couple with the continuum propagating mode of MZI in the fiber core. A theoretical model predicts the controllable resonance lineshape by changing the phase difference between the MZI's two interference pathways. Fano-like resonances with an extinction ratio over 20 dB are experimentally observed, which are reliably tuned into Lorentzian and electromagnetically induced transparency-like resonances by versatile methods. The realization of Fano-like resonances with broad tunability in this all-in-fiber structure holds potentials in fiber-based applications of sensing, signal processing and nonlinear optics.
We propose a simple microresonator scheme for a Mach-Zehnder interferometer in which a microresonator is side coupled to one arm and a phase shifter is introduced into the other arm, to produce an asymmetric Fano-resonance line shape. In this system, a phase shifter is used to control the variation of the asymmetric line shape, with another reverse resonance next to a resonance minimum over a very narrow frequency range, which results from the interference between a direct channel and a high-Q resonance indirect channel. We also theoretically investigate the novel bistability characteristic based on these shapes.
A critical aspect of quantum mechanics is the nonlocal nature of the wavefunction, a characteristic that may yield unexpected coupling of nominally isolated systems. The capacity to detect this coupling can be vital in many situations, especially those in which its strength is weak. In this work we demonstrate an approach to such detection by making use of one of the most ubiquitous of wave-interference phenomena, namely the Fano resonance. The focus of this joint experimental and theoretical work is on demonstrating a novel form of \textit{nonequilibrium} Fano resonance, that is very different in nature to the usual (quasi-equilibrium) implementations of this phenomenon. The essential idea of our approach is to exploit the strong sensitivity of the Fano resonance to the presence of additional transmission pathways, as a means to identify the coupling of some host system to an \textit{intruder}. Crucially, our nonequilibrium scheme allows us to detect the presence of \textit{hidden} components within some system, even while they remain \textit{invisible} in near-equilibrium transport. For a proof-of-concept demonstration of this phenomenon, we implement an electron-wave interferometer from mesoscopic quantum point contacts. The wave-based origins of the Fano resonance imply, however, that our scheme should be widely realizable across a variety of physical platforms.
Fano resonance is a well-celebrated weak-coupling phenomenon whereby a small interaction between a discrete and a continuum of excited states leads to an interference between the respective two transition amplitudes, resulting in an asymmetric line shape in the excitation spectra. We present the strong-coupling phase of the Fano's model where the interaction is localized in a region $\ensuremath{\xi}$ that is smaller than the collective coupling between the discrete state and the continuum. We explore the behavior of the excitation probability $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ as a function of $\ensuremath{\xi}$, the ratio of the bare transition amplitudes, and the energy of the discrete state. In the strong-coupling phase, the spectral function of the discrete state splits up and produces up to three complete destructive interferences or zeros of $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ along with ultrasharp features. We also find that the discrete state does not have to lie within the continuum to produce the well-known weak-coupling profiles of $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ as long as the collective coupling is strong enough. In addition, we consider a broadened state instead of a continuum and present a method that exactly treats such cases by explicitly including the source of the broadening---a weak coupling to the continuum of environment states---in the model.
The wave-particle duality that manifests in the Young's double-slit interferometry satisfying the well known Englert-Greenberger-Yasin inequality has recently been shown to obey a universal triality relation involving coherence, predictability and rather surprisingly entanglement. In the present work, we explicitly demonstrate the persistence of the triality relation in the quantum induced coherence interferometer and the classical configuration recovers the well known duality inequality. Furthermore, we explore the origin of coherence and entanglement, in the induced coherence interferometer, and means to control them. We show that path indistinguishability (or intrinsic indistinguishability of the sources) in our setup plays a complementary role in influencing both interference and entanglement. We bring out manifestly the nature of coherence in both classical and quantum versions of induced coherence interferometers.
Over the past several decades, single photon-based path interference in double-slit experiment has been well demonstrated for the particle nature of photons satisfying complementarity theory, where the quantum mechanical interpretation of the single photon interference fringe is given by Born rule for complex amplitudes in measurements. Unlike most conventional methods using entangled photon pairs, here, a classical coherent light source is directly applied for the proof of the same self-interference phenomenon. Instead of double slits, we use a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as usual, where the resulting self-interference fringe of coherent single photons is exactly the same as that of the coherent photon ensemble of the laser, demonstrating that the classical coherence based on the wave nature is rooted in the single photon self-interference. This unexpected result seems to contradict our common understanding of decoherence phenomena caused by multi-wave interference among bandwidth distributed photons in coherence optics.