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Frontiers in Optics

Non-local angular double-slit ghost diffraction with thermal light

Lu Gao, Jiapeng Zhao, Omar S. Magaña‐Loaiza, Seyed Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Mirhosseini, Yiyu Zhou, Robert W. Boyd

Published Jan 1, 2016• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report an experimental observation of ghost diffraction with non-local angular double-slit by making use of thermal light and orbital angular momentum (OAM) correlation measurement. A correlated angular interference pattern of the distributed angular double-slit is measured.
DOI
10.1364/fio.2016.jth2a.14

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Quantum ghost diffraction harnesses quantum correlations to record diffraction or interference features using photons that have never interacted with the diffractive element. By designing an optical system in which the diffraction pattern can be produced by double slits of variable width either through a conventional diffraction scheme or a ghost diffraction scheme, we can explore the transition between the case where ghost diffraction behaves as conventional diffraction and the case where it does not. For conventional diffraction the angular extent increases as the scale of the diffracting object is reduced. By contrast, we show that no matter how small the scale of the diffracting object, the angular extent of the ghost diffraction is limited (by the transverse extent of the spatial correlations between beams). Our study is an experimental realisation of Popper's thought experiment on the validity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. We discuss the implication of our results in this context and explain that it is compatible with, but not proof of, the Copenhagen interpretation.
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