Quantum interference is a challenging phenomenon in quantum optics. According to this principle of superposition of quantum mechanics, elementary particles such as photon can not only be in more than one place at a given time, but that an individual particle can cross its own trajectory and interfere with the direction of its path. Thomas Young devised the double slit experiment to prove that light consisted of waves. Analysis of the double slit experiment and the interference pattern indicates that each photon not only goes through both the slits simultaneously, but traverses every possible trajectory on the way to the target, not just in theory, but in fact. In the present work we have analysed the situation in terms of quantum superposition and Schrodinger cat states in quantum optics. The nature of photon in this analysis is examined
Two-mode squeezing is central to entangled-photon generation and nonlinear interferometry, yet standard perturbative low-gain treatments and Gaussian formalisms can obscure the interference of photon-number amplitudes, especially in nonlinear interferometers and at high gain. Here we derive a closed-form Fock-basis expression for the action of the two-mode squeezing operator on arbitrary number states, enabling the direct analysis of nonlinear interferometers in the photon-number basis at arbitrary squeezing strength. Within this framework, we provide intuitive physical interpretations of several known quantum-interference effects and identify a new multi-photon interference phenomenon in a four-crystal geometry that could readily be observed in laboratories. Our work provides a compact analytic toolkit and explicit design rules for engineering multi-photon interference, with applications in quantum sensing, precision metrology, and quantum state generation.
The wave aspect of light is observed experimentally through interference phenomena, and in a certain sense such observations always require a division of the given (initial) light field into two or more space-time parts. The division can only be done by introducing matter (massive particles) in the field region, and the light-matter interaction inevitably changes the initial state of the field. Not least when one is dealing with single and few-photon interference, it is good to remember again a central point of Niels Bohr, namely that no elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon. It turns out that it is possible to observe interference with a quantized electromagnetic field which contains only one photon. Since the irreversible final detection destroys the photon, it is in practice necessary to repeat the experiment starting from the same initial (given) conditions. Below we shall discuss the basics of single-photon interference in the simplest terms.
Interference is one of the most fundamental features which characterizes quantum systems. Here we provide an exhaustive analysis of the interfere dynamics associated with wave-packet superpositions from both the standard quantum-mechanical perspective and the Bohmian one. From this analysis, clear and insightful pictures of the physics involved in these kind of processes are obtained, which are of general validity (i.e., regardless of the type of wave packets considered) in the understanding of more complex cases where interference is crucial (e.g., scattering problems, slit diffraction, quantum control scenarios or, even, multipartite interactions). In particular, we show how problems involving wave-packet interference can be mapped onto problems of wave packets scattered off potential barriers.
In a recent experiment by Eichmann et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 2359 (1993)], polarization-sensitive measurements of the fluorescence from two four-level ions driven by a linearly polarized laser were made. Depending on the polarization chosen, different degrees of interference were observed. We carry out a theoretical and numerical study of this system, showing that the results can largely be understood by treating the atoms as independent radiators which are synchronized by the phase of the incident laser field. The interference and its loss may be described in terms of the difference between coherent and incoherent driving of the various atomic transitions in the steady state. In the numerical simulations, which are carried out using the Monte Carlo wave-function method, we remove the assumption that the atoms radiate independently and consider the photodetection process in detail. This allows us to see the total interference pattern build up from individual photodetections and also to see the effects of superfluorescence, which become important when the atomic separation is comparable to an optical wavelength. The results of the calculations are compared with the experiment. We also carry out simulations in the non-steady-state regime and discuss the relationship between the visibility of the interference pattern and which-path considerations.
The nature of light, extending from the optical to the x-ray regime, is reviewed from a diffraction point of view by comparing field-based statistical optics and photon-based quantum optics approaches. The topic is introduced by comparing historical diffraction concepts based on wave interference, Dirac’s notion of photon self-interference, Feynman’s interference of space–time photon probability amplitudes, and Glauber’s formulation of coherence functions based on photon detection. The concepts are elucidated by a review of how the semiclassical combination of the disparate photon and wave concepts have been used to describe light creation, diffraction, and detection. The origin of the fundamental diffraction limit is then discussed in both wave and photon pictures. By use of Feynman’s concept of probability amplitudes associated with independent photons, we show that quantum electrodynamics, the complete theory of light, reduces in lowest order to the conventional wave formalism of diffraction. As an introduction to multi-photon effects, we then review fundamental one- and two-photon experiments and detection schemes, in particular the seminal Hanbury Brown–Twiss experiment. The formal discourse of the paper starts with a treatment of first-order coherence theory. In first order, the statistical optics and quantum optics formulations of coherence are shown to be equivalent. This is elucidated by a discussion of Zernike’s powerful theorem of partial coherence propagation, a cornerstone of statistical optics, followed by its quantum derivation based on the interference of single-photon probability amplitudes. The treatment is then extended to second-order coherence theory, where the equivalence of wave and particle descriptions is shown to break down. This is illustrated by considering two photons whose space–time probability amplitudes are correlated through nonlinear birth processes, resulting in entanglement or cloning. In both cases, the two-photon diffraction patterns are shown to exhibit resolution below the conventional diffraction limit, defined by the one-photon diffraction patterns. The origin of the reduction is shown to arise from the interference of two-photon probability amplitudes. By comparing first- and second-order diffraction, it is shown that the conventional first-order concept of partial coherence with its limits of chaoticity and first-order coherence has the second-order analogue of partial entanglement, with its limits corresponding to two entangled photons (“entangled biphotons”) and two cloned photons (“cloned biphotons”), the latter being second-order coherent. The concept of cloned biphotons is extended to the case of
n cloned photons, resulting in a
1/n reduction of the diffraction limit. In the limit of
nth-order collective state are shown to propagate on particle like trajectories, reproducing the 0th-order ray-optics picture. These results are discussed in terms of the linearity of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s space–momentum uncertainty principle. Finally, a general concept of coherence based on photon density is developed that in first order is equivalent to the conventional wave-based picture.