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Physical Review A

Localization of photon bunching with thermal light

De-Zhong Cao, Hui-Fen Tian, Baolong Xu, Su-Heng Zhang, Kaige Wang

Published Jul 23, 2012• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose an experimental scheme in which two orthogonally polarized thermal light beams with antisymmetrical wavefronts are overlapped. The experimental results demonstrate that this setup can focus the beam in two-photon and multiphoton correlation measurements. The focused ``two-photon'' spot possesses subwavelength resolution, surpassing the classical diffraction limit. Since the experimental setup consists of only two right-angle-mirror devices without the help of lenses, the two-photon focusing effect does not apparently rely on the beam focusing. Physically, the phenomenon signifies that the photon bunching can be localized within a very small region through two-photon interference in contrast to the conventional Hanbury Brown--Twiss effect of thermal light. In the higher-order intensity correlation measurement, the multiphoton bunching can be limited within a very small central region while the background is greatly suppressed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.86.013831

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We propose an experimental scheme in which two orthogonally polarized thermal light beams with antisymmetrical wavefronts are overlapped. The experimental results demonstrate that this setup can focus the beam in two-photon and multiphoton correlation measurements. The focused ``two-photon'' spot possesses subwavelength resolution, surpassing the classical diffraction limit. Since the experimental setup consists of only two right-angle-mirror devices without the help of lenses, the two-photon focusing effect does not apparently rely on the beam focusing. Physically, the phenomenon signifies that the photon bunching can be localized within a very small region through two-photon interference in contrast to the conventional Hanbury Brown--Twiss effect of thermal light. In the higher-order intensity correlation measurement, the multiphoton bunching can be limited within a very small central region while the background is greatly suppressed.
We report on the two-photon superbunching effect of thermal light via constructive multiple two-photon path interference, showing the possibility of controlling the bunching property of thermal light in a linear optical system. By inserting nnn pairs of mutually first-order incoherent optical channels as a cascade into the traditional Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) interferometer, the two-photon bunching peak-to-background ratio of thermal light can be increased by up to $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1.{5}^{n}$, surpassing the theoretical upper limit of 2 for a traditional HBT interferometer. Experimentally, the ratio was measured to be $2.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1$ when one pair of optical channels was inserted. Such a scheme can be viewed as a prototype of a two-photon grating.
We propose an incoherent interferometer which can partly modify the spatial correlation property of thermal light. Applying the interferometer to the two-photon double-slit interference with thermal light, we find that the subwavelength interference patterns appear in the intensity correlation not only between two same polarized photons at different positions but also between two orthogonally polarized photons at the same position. The latter can correspond to the two-photon double-slit interference using a two-photon entangled source. Our experimental result suggests that a thermal light source is capable of accomplishing subwavelength lithography technique to surpass the Rayleigh resolution limit.
Photons emitted by incoherent sources exhibit temporal bunching, a fundamental manifestation of Bose-Einstein statistics first observed by Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT). While intensity correlation measurements originated in astronomy and are now central across quantum technologies, biophysics, and spectroscopy, observing temporal bunching in broadband thermal light remains limited by detector temporal resolution. Conventional approaches - such as streak cameras or optical upconversion - introduce severe trade-offs in efficiency, bandwidth, or setup versatility. Here, we propose and demonstrate a third route: pre-detection temporal magnification of the optical field prior to measuring its intensity autocorrelation function in a conventional HBT setup. Using an electro-optic time lens with a temporal magnification of 660, we resolve the temporal intensity autocorrelation of broadband thermal light generated via non-degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion with a bandwidth of 250 GHz. This enables direct observation of thermal photon bunching on sub-3.5 picosecond timescales without narrow spectral filtering, establishing pre-detection temporal imaging as a general platform for broadband statistical optics, with applications spanning ultrafast quantum optics, biophysical imaging, and potentially stellar intensity interferometry.
Usually HBT effect can be interpreted by classical (intensity fluctuation correlation) and quantum (interference of two-photon probability amplitudes) theories properly at the same time. In this manuscript, we report a deliberately designed experiment in which two chaotic light beams has the same intensity fluctuation but mutual-orthogonal polarizations to each other so there will be no interference of two-photon probability amplitudes. Classical and quantum theory give different predictions on if there should be HBT (photon bunching) effect or not in the experiment. The experiment results are used to test the two different predictions. At the end, both the temporal and spatial HBT effects are observed.
Photon bunching, a feature of classical thermal fields, has been widely exploited to implement ghost imaging. Here we show that spatial photon antibunching can be experimentally observed via low-pass filtering of the intensities of the two thermal light beams from a beamsplitter correlation system. Through suitable choice of the filter thresholds, the minimum of the measured normalized anti-correlation function, i.e., antibunching dip, can be lower than 0.2, while its full-width-at-half-maximum can be much narrower than that of the corresponding positive correlation peak. Based on this anti-correlation effect, a super-resolution negative ghost image is achieved in a lensless scheme, in which the spatial resolution can exceed the Rayleigh diffraction limit by more than a factor of two. The setup is quite simple and easy to implement, which is an advantage for practical applications.
We propose to use multiphoton interferences from statistically independent light sources in combination with linear optical detection techniques to enhance the resolution in imaging. Experimental results with up to five independent thermal light sources confirm this approach to improve the spatial resolution. Since no involved quantum state preparation or detection is required, the experiment can be considered an extension of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment for spatial intensity correlations of order N>2.