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Quantum and Semiclassical Optics Journal of the European Optical Society Part B

Quantum multi-particle interference due to a single-photon state

Z. Y. Ou

Published Apr 1, 1996• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum interference of a multi-particle is demonstrated in a simple arrangement in which the photon distribution at the output of a lossless beamsplitter for an N-photon state input at one of its input ports is dramatically changed by a single-photon state input at the other port. By a simple argument, we find that the effect persists even if the N-photon state is replaced by an arbitrary state of light.

DOI
10.1088/1355-5111/8/2/001

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Quantum interference of a multi-particle is demonstrated in a simple arrangement in which the photon distribution at the output of a lossless beamsplitter for an N-photon state input at one of its input ports is dramatically changed by a single-photon state input at the other port. By a simple argument, we find that the effect persists even if the N-photon state is replaced by an arbitrary state of light.
The interference effects that can be observed in the two output arms of a lossless beam splitter are calculated for incident light in the form of a photon-pair excitation in the two input arms. The output state that occurs when the photon pair is excited in a single input arm resembles that expected for independent classical particles, whereas quantum interference effects occur when the photon pair is divided between the two input arms. Detailed output photocount correlation functions are calculated for two-photon input states produced by a two-atom light source, a degenerate or nondegenerate parametric oscillator in a high-Q cavity, and an atomic cascade emission light source.
Multi-photon interference can be observed using independently generated photons as input. In the most simple case, these photons meet up at a beam splitter, resulting in quantum interference between transmission and reflection of the photons. Here, we show that non-local multi-photon interference can be implemented by using a mode swap operation to generate entanglement between the photons detected in the outputs of two spatially separated interferometers. The spatial separation of the output photons makes this implementation of multi-photon interference particularly suitable for quantum protocols that distribute quantum information to different parties.
Abstract A re-visitation of the well known free space Mach-Zehnder interferometer is reported here. The coexistence between one-photon and two-photons interference from collinear color entangled photon pairs is investigated. Thisarises from an arbitrarily small unbalance in the arm transmittance. The tuning of such asymmetry is reflected in dramatic changes in the coincidence detection, revealing beatings between one particle and two particle interference patterns. In particular, the role of the losses and of the intrinsic phase imperfectness of the lossy beamsplitter are explored in a single-port excited Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This configuration is especially useful for quantum optics on a chip, where the guiding geometry forces photons to travel in the same spatial mode.