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arXiv:1809.03160 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Experimental observation of three-photon superbunching with classical light in a linear system

Yu Zhou, Sheng Luo, Zhaohui Tang, Huaibin Zheng, Hui Chen, Jianbin Liu, Fuli Li, Zhuo Xu

Published Dec 17, 2018• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Three-photon superbunching is experimentally observed with the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that three-photon superbunching is observed with classical light in a linear optical system. From the quantum optics point of view, three-photon superbunching is interpreted as the result of constructive-destructive three-photon interference. The key to observe three-photon superbunching with superbunching pseudothermal light is that all the different ways to trigger a three-photon coincidence count are in principle indistinguishable, which is experimentally guaranteed by putting a pinhole before each rotating ground glass to ensure that all the passed photons are within the same coherence area. The observed three-photon superbunching is helpful to increase the visibility of ghost imaging and understand the physics of third-order interference of light.

DOI
10.1364/josab.36.000096

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Three-photon superbunching is experimentally observed with the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that three-photon superbunching is observed with classical light in a linear optical system. From the quantum optics point of view, three-photon superbunching is interpreted as the result of constructive-destructive three-photon interference. The key to observe three-photon superbunching with superbunching pseudothermal light is that all the different ways to trigger a three-photon coincidence count are in principle indistinguishable, which is experimentally guaranteed by putting a pinhole before each rotating ground glass to ensure that all the passed photons are within the same coherence area. The observed three-photon superbunching is helpful to increase the visibility of ghost imaging and understand the physics of third-order interference of light.
Two-photon superbunching of classical light is observed with single-mode continuous-wave laser light in a linear optical system. By adding more two-photon paths via rotating ground glasses, pinholes, lens, etc., g(2)(0)=7.10±0.07 is experimentally observed. The second-order temporal coherence function of the superbunching pseudothermal light is theoretically and experimentally studied in detail. It is predicted that the degree of coherence can be increased dramatically by adding more multi-photon paths. For instance, the degree of the second- and third-order coherence of the superbunching pseudothermal light with five rotating ground glasses can reach 32 and 7776, respectively. The results are helpful to understanding the physics of superbunching and improving the visibility of thermal light ghost imaging.
A simple superbunching pseudothermal light source is introduced based on common instruments such as laser, lenses, pinholes, and ground glasses. ${g}^{(2)}(0)=3.66\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02$ is observed in the suggested scheme by employing two rotating ground glasses. Quantum and classical theories are employed to interpret the observed superbunching effect. It is predicted that g(2)(0){g}^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0) can reach 2N{2}^{N}2N if NNN rotating ground glasses were employed. These results are helpful to understand the physics of superbunching. The proposed superbunching pseudothermal light may serve as a type of light to study the second- and higher-order coherence of light and have potential application in improving the visibility of thermal light ghost imaging.
Two-photon bunching and superbunching are important to understanding the physics of ghost imaging and second-order interference of light. With the help of the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light, the physics of bunching and superbunching in superbunching pseudothermal light is studied in detail. A special two-photon coincidence count detection system is designed to measure the required two-photon coincidence counts. It is concluded that the two-photon superbunching effect cannot be observed without taking the intensity changing process into account. A similar conclusion holds for two-photon bunching of thermal light. The conclusions are helpful for understanding of the physics of two-photon bunching and superbunching in intensity or photon number fluctuation correlation theory.
Superbunching pseudothermal light has important applications in studying the second- and higher-order interference of light in quantum optics. Unlike the photon statistics of thermal or pseudothermal light is well understood, the photon statistics of superbunching pseudothermal light has not been studied yet. In this paper, we will employ single-photon detectors to measure the photon statistics of superbunching pseudothermal light and calculate the degree of second-order coherence. It is found that the larger the value of the degree of second-order coherence of superbunching pseudothermal light is, the more the measured photon distribution deviates from the one of thermal or pseudothermal light in the tail part. The results are helpful to understand the physics of two-photon superbunching with classical light. It is suggested that superbunching pseudothermal light can be employed to generate non-Rayleigh temporal speckles.
We proposed to boost the photon bunching effect of classical light via a modified Fabry-Pérot cavity with one of the cavity mirrors being replaced by a spatial light modulator, through which multiple independent transverse modulations, each was to encode independently spatially correlated phase on the wave front of the light field, was cascaded in sequence in the longitudinal propagation direction in the cavity. The two-photon bunching peak and the three-photon bunching peak of the generated superbunching light field were measured to be 36.9±2.036.9\pm2.036.9±2.0 and (2.46±0.12)×103\rm (2.46\pm0.12)\times10^{3}(2.46±0.12)×103, respectively, which, as compared to those of thermal light, were improved by one-order and three-order of magnitude, respectively. Correspondingly, the ghost image visibility reconstructed with the superbunching light was demonstrated experimentally to be improved by ∼40\sim 40∼40 times as compared to that with the pseudo-thermal light. Such classical superbunching light field is of essential importance not only for fundamental physics but also for potential applications such as correlated imaging, ghost interference and nonlinear optics.
We report on the two-photon superbunching effect of thermal light via constructive multiple two-photon path interference, showing the possibility of controlling the bunching property of thermal light in a linear optical system. By inserting nnn pairs of mutually first-order incoherent optical channels as a cascade into the traditional Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) interferometer, the two-photon bunching peak-to-background ratio of thermal light can be increased by up to $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1.{5}^{n}$, surpassing the theoretical upper limit of 2 for a traditional HBT interferometer. Experimentally, the ratio was measured to be $2.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1$ when one pair of optical channels was inserted. Such a scheme can be viewed as a prototype of a two-photon grating.