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Physical Review A

Controlling the degree of visibility of Young’s fringes with photon coincidence measurements

P. H. Souto Ribeiro, Sebastião Pádua, J. C. Machado da Silva, G. A. Barbosa

Published May 1, 1994• 145 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Is it possible to detect the interference from an extended incoherent source with Young's slits when the source-slits distance is such that all dimensions of the coherence area of the incident light beam are smaller than the distance between the slits? We have experimentally demonstrated that, under the above conditions, interference fringes can be obtained with a controlled degree of visibility by means of coincidence measurements between conujugated beams of the down-conversion luminescence.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.49.4176

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Is it possible to detect the interference from an extended incoherent source with Young's slits when the source-slits distance is such that all dimensions of the coherence area of the incident light beam are smaller than the distance between the slits? We have experimentally demonstrated that, under the above conditions, interference fringes can be obtained with a controlled degree of visibility by means of coincidence measurements between conujugated beams of the down-conversion luminescence.
The transverse spatial properties of the twin light beams of the down-conversion have been recently investigated in experiments using double-slit and coincidence measurements. Fringes are obtained, with a controlled degree of visibility, placing the slits in the signal beam and scanning the signal detector [direct interference---Phys. Rev. A 49, 4176 (1994)] and also, for the degenerated type II down-conversion, with slits in the signal beam and scanning the idler detector [ghost interference---Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 3600 (1995)]. The idea of a ghost source is used to discuss the direct interference experiment. Using a nondegenerated type I down-conversion, experimental results are obtained showing that the visibility of the ghost interference patterns can be controlled by the ghost source size, analogously as it can be done for a real light source. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
An approach for calculating fourth-order coherence functions between fields produced in the parametric down-conversion process is proposed. It takes into account the transverse correlations between twin photons and is used to calculate the visibility of the interference patterns obtained in double-slit experiments with coincidence detection. The finite dimension of the light source and detectors are shown to be responsible for a kind of partial coherence which affects the visibility of the fringes. The results explain known features and predict other ones.
We discuss Young's double-slit experiment using a partially coherent light source consisting of a helium-neon laser incident on a rotating piece of white paper. Such an experiment is appropriate for undergraduate students as an independent project or as part of an advanced lab course. As is well known, the resulting interference pattern is observed to disappear and return, depending on the angular size of the source. Interestingly, while the standard theoretical prediction for the light intensity agrees quite well with experimental data when the fringe visibility is high, the prediction is noticeably off when the visibility is low. A first-principles calculation of the light intensity is performed and shown to agree extremely well with the experimental results for all visibilities.
In classical optics, Young's double-slit experiment with colored coherent light gives rise to individual interference fringes for each light frequency, referring to single-photon interference. However, two-photon double-slit interference has been widely studied only for wavelength-degenerate biphoton, known as subwavelength quantum lithography. In this work, we report double-slit interference experiments with two-color biphoton. Different from the degenerate case, the experimental results depend on the measurement methods. From a two-axis coincidence measurement pattern we can extract complete interference information about two colors. The conceptual model provides an intuitional picture of the in-phase and out-of-phase photon correlations and a complete quantum understanding about the which-path information of two colored photons.
Conditional interference fringes are found when parametric down-converted photon pairs are sent to two Young's double slits. The transmitted photon pairs are detected in coincidence as a function of the transverse spatial coordinates. Conditional interference is found in the fourth-order interference pattern with and without second-order interference. A quantum multimode calculation shows that the fourth-order Young interference pattern is strongly dependent on the transverse profile of the pump laser that generates the twin photon pairs. Conditionality is observed by tailoring this profile. A control of the conditionality is obtained via the pump laser beam transverse profile.