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Physical Review Letters

Observation of Four-Photon Interference with a Beam Splitter by Pulsed Parametric Down-Conversion

Z. Y. Ou, June‐Koo Kevin Rhee, L. J. Wang

Published Aug 2, 1999• 113 citations
Publisher

Abstract

When four photons arrive at a beam splitter, two from each side, a four-photon, six-path interference effect occurs to yield a sixfold enhancement of the probability for all four photons to exit together from the beam splitter. We produce the four-photon state by using the stimulated emission process in a pulsed parametric down-conversion and measure the probability for all four photons to exit from one side of the beam splitter. The observed enhancement factor is in good agreement with a multimode treatment of pulsed down-conversion.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.83.959

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Physical Review A•Nov 1, 1998•1 citation
When four photons arrive at a beam splitter, two from each side, a four-photon, six-path interference effect occurs to yield a sixfold enhancement of the probability for all four photons to exit together from the beam splitter. We produce the four-photon state by using the stimulated emission process in a pulsed parametric down-conversion and measure the probability for all four photons to exit from one side of the beam splitter. The observed enhancement factor is in good agreement with a multimode treatment of pulsed down-conversion.
When four photons arrive at a beamsplitter, two from each side, four-photon interference will occur such that the probability for three photons to exit from one side and one photon from the other vanishes while the probability for four photon to exit from one side is hence increased. We will analyze the phenomenon and report an experiment to demonstrate it in parametric down-conversion with pulsed pumping. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
A number of multiphoton interference schemes involving independent fields from parametric down-conversion are analyzed. They include fourth-order (two-photon) interference between two fields from two independent parametric down-conversion processes, interference with two independent single photon Fock states (produced by gated parametric down-conversion), and quantum state teleportation and entanglement swapping. It is shown that the visibility in these interference experiments is related to a quantity that is responsible for the photon bunching effect in one of the fields (signal or idler) from the parametric down-conversion process. Besides the two-photon interference schemes, a four-photon interference scheme is discussed where we consider four-photon partition at a beamsplitter. It is found that probability distribution of the partition is dramatically changed by four-photon interference of six paths and the four-photon effect also depends on the same quantity responsible for photon bunching. We will discuss the difference between two-photon interference and four-photon interference.
Double-pair emission from type-II parametric down-conversion results in a highly entangled four-photon state. Due to interference, which is similar to bunching from thermal emission, this state is not simply a product of two pairs. The observation of this state can be achieved by splitting the two emission modes at beam splitters and subsequent detection of a photon in each output. Here we describe the features of this state and construct a Bell-type inequality, which gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a four-photon test of local realistic hidden variable theories.
An interferometric arrangement utilizing a pair of twin photons, generated by parametric down-conversion, is devised to show second-order interferences revealing de Broglie's wavelength of the photon pair as a whole and the Pancharatnam phase depending on the number of photons. This proposed experiment utilizes the phenomenon ``induced coherence without stimulated emission'' to generate a coherent superposition of states distinct from the usual superposition with beam splitters, where the photons are independently scattered. In this experiment interference occurs due to recombination of photon trajectories on a beam splitter and also through frustration or enhancement of the down-conversion processes.