Quantum Experiments with Photons Since 1945

Dennis F. Vanderwerf

M. Beck, Ethan Dederick

We have developed a series of undergraduate teaching laboratories that explore some of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. All of the experiments involve performing measurements on individual photons or entangled-photon pairs. The experiments include: "Proving" that light consists of photons, single-photon interference, and tests of local realism. We will describe the experiments, placing an emphasis on an experiment which measures the quantum-mechanical polarization state of a photon. This experiment explicitly demonstrates that measurements performed on one member of an entangled-photon pair effect the results of measurements of the other photon. We will also describe how we have integrated the experiments with our upper-level undergraduate quantum mechanics course.

Muhammad Waseem, Faizan-e-Ilahi, Muhammad Sabieh Anwar

Zhihao Wu, Junjie Wu, Anqi Huang

Abstract Simulators for photonic quantum information processing (PQIP) experiments are essentially different with currently available quantum-circuit simulators. In PQIP experiments, photons are usually encoded by multiple degrees of freedom, some of which are multi-level or even infinite-level. Moreover, the evolution of indistinguishable photons cannot be described elegantly by the model used in quantum-circuit simulators. A simulator focusing on PQIP experiments is urgently needed, as it plays an important role in PQIP experiments designing and verification. We developed PhotoniQLAB, an object-oriented framework designed for simulating PQIP experiments, which provides a virtual-lab user experience. The core simulation unit is a computer algebraic system based on the second quantization method. PhotoniQLAB only requires users to enter the structure information of a target PQIP experiment to conduct a simulation, as it can understand the topological structure by itself. The mathematical foundation and technical details of PhotoniQLAB are discussed in the paper. The performance of PhotoniQLAB, which is analyzed and used to simulate several experimental schemes in this paper, has been shown to be efficient enough for near-term PQIP experiments. PhotoniQLAB shows its flexibility and universality, through simulating more than 60 existing PQIP experiments in published papers. We believe that PhotoniQLAB will become a fundamental PQIP software infrastructure facilitating the analyses and designs of PQIP experiments.

Daniel J. Rogers

Christopher C. Gerry, Kimberley M. Bruno

This chapter describes experiments involving pairs of photons, which display much richer and more remarkable manifestations of quantum interference than can be seen in single-photon experiments. These include two photons on a beam splitter and the Hong–Ou–Mandel experiment. It also considers two phenomena: the quantum eraser, and faster-than-light (superluminal) quantum tunneling. The chapter concludes with an experiment performed by X. Zou, L. Wang, and L. Mandel at the University of Rochester in 1991. This experiment shows that it is possible to manipulate photon interference (to destroy or revive it) with actions on another photon that is not even in the interfering pathways.