Physical Review Letters
Entanglement between a Photon and a Quantum Well
W. Hoyer, M. Kira, Stephan W. Koch, H. Stolz, Sorin Mosor, Julian Sweet, Claudia Ell, G. Khitrova, H. M. Gibbs
Abstract
The lack of translational invariance perpendicular to the plane of a single quantum well causes equal probability for spontaneous emission to the left or right. Combining one emission path from the left and one from the right into a common detector leads to interference fringes for fundamentally indistinguishable paths corresponding to geometries where the same in-plane momentum is transferred to the quantum well. For all other paths, no interference is observed because of the entanglement between the photon and extended Bloch states of the many-body system. In multiple-quantum-well structures the interference can be controlled via the spacing between the wells.