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Physical Review A

Spatial two-photon interference in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer

Heonoh Kim, Osung Kwon, Wonsik Kim, Taesoo Kim

Published Feb 27, 2006• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report the observation of the cosine modulation in the coincidence rates from a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer. Spatial interference fringes are seen by minute rotations of one mirror about the vertical axis, while the beam splitter is fixed in the center position. The results show that the maximum visibility of the fringe is 0.81, and the photon pairs separated by less than $1.52\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}$ in the source plane are measured to be indistinguishable. It turns out that it is possible to invert the HOM dips to peaks by the rotation of the mirror.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.023820

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Physical Review A•May 30, 2008•27 citations
We report the observation of the cosine modulation in the coincidence rates from a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer. Spatial interference fringes are seen by minute rotations of one mirror about the vertical axis, while the beam splitter is fixed in the center position. The results show that the maximum visibility of the fringe is 0.81, and the photon pairs separated by less than 1.52mm1.52\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mm}1.52mm in the source plane are measured to be indistinguishable. It turns out that it is possible to invert the HOM dips to peaks by the rotation of the mirror.
We report the first observation of Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference of highly indistinguishable photon pairs with spatial resolution. Direct imaging of two-photon coalescence with an intensified sCMOS camera system clearly reveals spatially separated photons appearing pairwise within one of the two modes. With the use of the camera system, we quantified the number of pairs and recovered the full HOM dip yielding 96.3% interference visibility, as well as counted the number of coalesced pairs. We retrieved the spatial modes of both interfering photons by performing a proof-of-principle demonstration of a new, low-noise, high-resolution coincidence imaging scheme.
Two-photon interference effects arise because photons are indistinguishable particles. In the wellknown Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, the transmission of two photons at a beam splitter interferes destructively with the reflection of both photons, requiring both photons to "bunch up" by leaving the beam splitter on the same side. Here, we show that the interference between locally propagating photons and photons exchanged by a mode swap can be implemented by post-selecting spatially separated photon outputs of a four-path interferometer. Even though the photons detected at spatially separated locations must have travelled along paths that never met up at the same beam splitter, the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect can be observed in correlations between the output ports that originate from the association of detection events with non-local output modes defined by the two single photon inputs. Local phase shifts can be used to map out non-classical correlations between the photons detected at different output locations, clarifying the role of linear optics in generating entanglement between spatially separated photons. Our work thus establishes a fundamental relation between multiphoton interference and entanglement, opening the door to new possibilities in optical quantum technologies.
We present two-photon interference experiments with polarization-entangled photon pairs in a polarization-based Franson-type interferometer. Although the two photons do not meet at a common beamsplitter, a phase-insensitive Hong-Ou-Mandel type two-photon interference peak and dip fringes are observed, resulting from the two-photon interference effect between two indistinguishable two-photon probability amplitudes leading to a coincidence detection. A spatial quantum beating fringe is also measured for nondegenerate photon pairs in the same interferometer, although the two-photon states have no frequency entanglement. When unentangled polarization-correlated photons are used as an input state, the polarization entanglement is successfully recovered through the interferometer via delayed compensation.
We report two-photon interference with continuous-wave multi-mode coherent light. We show that the two-photon interference, in terms of the detection time difference, reveals two-photon beating fringes with the visibility V = 0.5. While scanning the optical delay of the interferometer, Hong-Ou-Mandel dips or peaks are measured depending on the chosen detection time difference. The HOM dips/peaks are repeated when the optical delay and the first-order coherence revival period of the multi-mode coherent light are the same. These results help to understand the nature of two-photon interference and also can be useful for quantum information science.
The spatial second-order interference of two independent pseudothermal light beams in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is studied experimentally and theoretically. The similar cosine modulation in the second-order coherence function as the one with entangled-photon pairs in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is observed. Two-photon interference based on Feynman's path integral theory is employed to interpret the results. The experimental results and theoretical simulations agree with each other very well.
We study the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer in the regime of spontaneous parametric down-conversion with high pump beam power at the crystal. In this regime one and two photons from a pump pulsed laser beam generate one and two pairs of photons, respectively. These photons are then directed to the beam splitter of the interferometer and detected at its exit in coincidence. An interesting phenomenon is observed: The reduction of the visibility of the Hong-Ou-Mandel coincidence peak (or dip) with the increase of pump power. We study the relation between the visibility of the fourth-order interference pattern and the power of the pumping laser beam for type I and type II phase-matching crystals. Our theoretical calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results.