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Microoptics Conference

Ultrafast direct measurement of HBT effect by two-photon absorption based on Feynman's path-integral theory

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

Published Nov 1, 2017• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect of thermal light is directly observed in a modified Michelson interferometer with a two-photon absorption detector at the ultrafast timescale. The contribution of other items in signal of two-photon absorption detector are analyzed in detail by employing Feynman's path-integral theory.
DOI
10.23919/moc.2017.8244540

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The Hanbury Brown–Twiss (HBT) interferometer, which is used to measure the correlation of two photons or two light beams, has played a crucial role in quantum optics and quantum information. We propose a generalized HBT interferometer, which is able to measure the correlation of photons or light beams up to eight in a single experimental run. With an improved time correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) algorithm, two-, three-, and four-photon coincidence counts, and the degree of fifth-order coherence of pseudothermal light are measured with a data collection time of 60 s. The generalized HBT interferometer can be used to measure the correlation of two multi-photon detection events by simulating photon number resolving detectors with multiple single-photon detectors. The generalized HBT interferometer and improved TCSPC algorithm provide a versatile framework for studying multi-photon correlations and interference, which is helpful to understand the physics of multi-photon interference and may find applications in fluorescence lifetime imaging and other techniques using TCSPC.
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