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IEEE Photonics Conference

Ultrafast direct measurement of HBT effect between different modes by two-photon absorption

Bin Bai, Hui Chen, Jianbin Liu, Huaibin Zheng, Zhuo Xu, Yu Zhou

Published Oct 1, 2017• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

HBT effect of thermal light between different modes based on multi-mode interference is directly observed in a modified Michelson interferometer with orthogonal polarizations by a two-photon absorption detector at ultrashort timescale, which serves as a new unique tool for ultrafast quantum bunching distribution.
DOI
10.1109/ipcon.2017.8116267

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Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect of multi-spatial-mode thermal light is obtained at ultrashort timescale by two-photon-absorption (TPA) in a semiconductor photon-counting module. A characteristic spectrum, due to the interference in multi-mode fiber, is observed directly in TPA detector for the first time. To analyze the output of such measurement, a theoretical model based on the Feynman's path-integral theory is built, which makes the contribution of related item and the corresponding spectral component match very well. In addition, by introducing an all-optical method into the current HBT apparatus, one can obtain the concerned second-order coherence spectrum directly without any postprocessing. This result may be helpful to develop ultrafast detection for the intensity interferometer with natural light. Meanwhile, the observation of HBT effect of multi-mode interference offers a new detection method for the optical fiber sensors.
In quantum mechanics, photons are bosons -- there is no restriction on the number of them that occupy the same quantum state, so many of them can bunch together, and this is well known as photon bunching effect. However, photon bunching and multiphoton interference of bunched photons have never been directly observed from a broadband thermal chaotic light source. Nevertheless, it has been known that the interference intensity of a number N of bunched photons oscillates with a wavelength of N times shorter than the wavelength of the constituent single photons, which should be observable in Fourier transform spectroscopy. A quantum Fourier transform spectrometer was made based on a Michelson interferometer and a diffraction spectrometer to observe the photon bunching from multiphoton interference of the bunched photons in thermal light. The results demonstrates 2 to 12 bunched photons were observed simultaneously from thousands of wavelengths in the light of a tungsten halogen lamp. The experiment discloses some interesting properties of the bunched photons. The results will provide new insights for advancing the theories of quantum optics, and the new technology opens the way for new precise measurement of photon bunching and multiphoton interference of bunched photons that are in all kinds of light sources or that are generated with quantum entangled photons.
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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.