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Chinese Physics Letters

A “Which Way” Experiment of Two-Photon Interference

Qin Wang, 黄运锋, 孙方稳, 张永生, 郭光灿

Published Jan 1, 2005• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

It is well known that the indistinguishability of particles causes interference. We give a “which way” experiment of two-photon interference marked with polarization. The result shows that the greater the distinguishability of the path by which two-photon passes, the lower the fringe visibility will be, and this phenomenon will disappear when the path becomes completely distinguishable.

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It is well known that the indistinguishability of particles causes interference. We give a “which way” experiment of two-photon interference marked with polarization. The result shows that the greater the distinguishability of the path by which two-photon passes, the lower the fringe visibility will be, and this phenomenon will disappear when the path becomes completely distinguishable.
Two results concerning photon pairs, one previously reported and one new, are summarized. It was previously shown that if the two photons are prepared in a quantum state formed from bar-A and bar-A' for photon 1 and bar-B and bar-B' for photon 2, then both one- and two-particle interferometry can be studied. If upsilon(sub i) is the visibility of one-photon interference fringes (i = 1,2) and upsilon(sub 12) is the visibility of two-photon fringes (a concept which we explicitly define), then upsilon(sub i) squared + upsilon(sub 12) squared is less than or equal to 1. The second result concerns the distinguishability of the paths of photon 2, using the known 2-photon state. A proposed measure E for path distinguishability is based upon finding an optimum strategy for betting on the outcome of a path measurement. Mandel has also proposed a measure of distinguishability P(sub D), defined in terms of the density operator rho of photon 2. We show that E is greater than or equal to P(sub D) and that upsilon(sub 2) = (1 - E(exp 2))exp 1/2.
Abstract A well-known result for the interference of two single-mode fields is that the degree of coherence and the degree of indistinguishability are the same when we consider the detection of a single photon. In this article, we present the relation between the degree of coherence, path indistinguishability and the fringe visibility considering interference of multiple numbers of single-mode fields while being interested in the detection of a single photon only. We will also mention how Born’s rule of interference for multiple sources is reflected in these results.
In the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics the interference of particles in a two-beam interferometer is closely related to the problem of which-way information. One of the mysteries of quantum mechanics relies on the assumption that the wavefunction of each photon propagates simultaneously along both classically allowed paths, and that interference arises as a consequence of the indistinguishability of those paths. Any attempt to obtain which-way information by putting individual labels on the photons in each pathway inevitably destroys interference. However, even in cases in which the photons carry which-way labels, it is possible to erase those labels after the particle has left the interferometer. The erasing process (partly or completely) destroys the which-way information, and thereby restores interference. This phenomenon is known as quantum erasing. Here we present a lecture demonstration experiment of quantum erasing based on a Mach–Zehnder interferometer operated with single photons.
We establish that a connection exists between wave-particle duality of photons and partial polarization of a light beam. We perform a two-path lowest-order (single photon) interference experiment and demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that the degree of polarization of the light beam emerging from an output of the interferometer depends on path distinguishability. In our experiment, we are able to change the quantum state of the emerging photon from a pure state to a fully mixed state without any direct interaction with the photon. Although most lowest-order interference experiments can be explained by classical theory, our experiment has no genuine classical analog. Our results show that a case exists where the cause of partial polarization is beyond the scope of classical theory.