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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Observation of two-photon virtual interference and diffraction

Dmitry Strekalov, Alexander V. Sergienko, Давид Николаевич Клышко, Yanhua H. Shih

Published May 6, 1996• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Observations of unusual diffraction and interference by two-photon correlation measurements are reported. The signal and idler beams produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion are sent in different directions, and detected by two distant point-like photon counting detectors. A double-slit or a single-slit is inserted into the signal beam. Interference- diffraction patterns are observed in coincidences by scanning the detector in the idler beam.

DOI
10.1117/12.239831

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Observations of unusual diffraction and interference by two-photon correlation measurements are reported. The signal and idler beams produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion are sent in different directions, and detected by two distant point-like photon counting detectors. A double-slit or a single-slit is inserted into the signal beam. Interference- diffraction patterns are observed in coincidences by scanning the detector in the idler beam.
We report a two-photon double-slit interference experiment. Two correlated photons, generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion and traveling in different directions, are made to pass through a double slit in such a way that the path of one photon can be identified with that of the other photon. No single-photon interference pattern is observed even if the path is not actually identified, but a spatial interference pattern appears in the joint detection counting rates of the photon pairs. It can easily be shown that these nonlocal phenomena cannot be exhibited by any kind of classical field.
One of the most surprising consequences of quantum mechanics is entanglement of two or more distance particles. The two-particle entangled state was mathematically formulated by Schrodinger. Based on this unusual quantum behavior, EPR defined their 'physical reality' and then asked the question: 'Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?' One may not appreciate EPR's criterion of physical reality and insist that 'no elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a recorded phenomenon'. Optical spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) is the most effective mechanism to generate an EPR type entangled two-photon state. In SPDC, an optical beam, called the pump, is incident on a birefringent crystal. The pump is intense enough so that nonlinear effects lead to the conversion of pump photons into pairs of photons, historically called signal and idler. Technically, the SPDC is said to be type-1 or type-2, depending on whether the signal and idler beams have parallel or orthogonal polarization. The SPDC conversion efficiency is typically on the order of 10(exp -9) to 10(exp -11), depending on the SPDC nonlinear material. The signal and idler intensities are extremely low, only single photon detection devices can register them. The quantum entanglement nature of SPDC has been demonstrated in EPR-Bohm experiments and Bell's inequality measurements. The following two experiments were recently performed in our laboratory, which are more closely related to the original 1935 EPR gedankenezperiment. The first experiment is a two-photon optical imaging type experiment, which has been named 'ghost image' by the physics community. The signal and idler beams of SPDC are sent in different directions, so that the detection of the signal and idler photons can be performed by two distant photon counting detectors. An aperture object (mask) is placed in front of the signal photon detector and illuminated by the signal beam through a convex lens. Surprisingly, an image of this aperture is observed in the idler beam, by scanning the idler photon detector in the transverse plane of the idler beam, if we are sure that the idler photon detector 'catches' the 'twin brother' of the signal, which can be easily performed by a coincidence measurement. This effect is even more striking when we found that the object-lens-image relationship satisfies the Gaussian thin lens equation. The second experiment demonstrates two-photon 'ghost' interference-diffraction. The experimental set up is similar to the image experiment, except that rather than a lens and an aperture it is a Young's double-slit (or a single-slit) inserted into the path of the signal beam. We could not find any interference (or diffraction) pattern behind the slit. Surprisingly, an interference (or diffraction) pattern is observed when scanning the detector in the idler beam, if we are sure that the idler photon detector 'catches' the 'twin brother' of the signal.
The reported experiment is a two-photon optical imaging experiment1 in which a spontaneous-parametric-downconversion light beam, which consists of pairs of orthogonally polarized signal and idler photons, is split into two diverging beams by a polarization beam splitter, so that co- incidence detections may be performed between two distant photon-counting detectors. An aperture (mask) placed in front of one of the detectors is illuminated by the signal beam through a convex lens. Surprisingly, an image of this aperture is observed in the coincidence counting rate when the other detector is scanned in the transverse plane of the idler beam, even though both detectors’ single counting rates remain constant.