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Frontiers in Optics

Superbunching Effect of Light with Digitally Designed Wavefront

Lu Zhang, Yiping Lu, Liming Li, Guoquan Zhang

Published Jan 1, 2018• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Superposition of multiple two-photon paths is introduced with digital wavefront encoding technique, resulting in superbunching effect. Experimentally, we measured a bunching peak of 4.18±0.05 with the digitally designed wavefront of classical light.
DOI
10.1364/fio.2018.jtu3a.13

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Superposition of multiple indistinguishable two-photon paths is introduced by means of a digital wave front encoding technique to design a spatially phase-correlated wave front of a light field, which could result in a superbunching effect with a bunching peak much larger than 2, the theoretical bunching peak of thermal light. Experimentally, we demonstrated a bunching peak of $11.72\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.05$ with the digitally designed phase-correlated wave front of classical light, which can be improved further on. A significant improvement of the visibility of the second-order interference fringes and ghost imaging was also experimentally demonstrated. Our method provides a convenient digitally controllable way to implement superposition of multiple different but indistinguishable two-photon paths, and therefore to modify the optical coherence properties of photons. Such a superbunching effect may have potential applications in improving the visibility of correlation interference and imaging, and enhancing the efficiency of two-photon nonlinear effects such as two-photon absorption effect.
We proposed to boost the photon bunching effect of classical light via a modified Fabry-Pérot cavity with one of the cavity mirrors being replaced by a spatial light modulator, through which multiple independent transverse modulations, each was to encode independently spatially correlated phase on the wave front of the light field, was cascaded in sequence in the longitudinal propagation direction in the cavity. The two-photon bunching peak and the three-photon bunching peak of the generated superbunching light field were measured to be 36.9±2.036.9\pm2.036.9±2.0 and (2.46±0.12)×103\rm (2.46\pm0.12)\times10^{3}(2.46±0.12)×103, respectively, which, as compared to those of thermal light, were improved by one-order and three-order of magnitude, respectively. Correspondingly, the ghost image visibility reconstructed with the superbunching light was demonstrated experimentally to be improved by ∼40\sim 40∼40 times as compared to that with the pseudo-thermal light. Such classical superbunching light field is of essential importance not only for fundamental physics but also for potential applications such as correlated imaging, ghost interference and nonlinear optics.
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.
Two-photon bunching and superbunching are important to understanding the physics of ghost imaging and second-order interference of light. With the help of the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light, the physics of bunching and superbunching in superbunching pseudothermal light is studied in detail. A special two-photon coincidence count detection system is designed to measure the required two-photon coincidence counts. It is concluded that the two-photon superbunching effect cannot be observed without taking the intensity changing process into account. A similar conclusion holds for two-photon bunching of thermal light. The conclusions are helpful for understanding of the physics of two-photon bunching and superbunching in intensity or photon number fluctuation correlation theory.
Three-photon superbunching is experimentally observed with the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that three-photon superbunching is observed with classical light in a linear optical system. From the quantum optics point of view, three-photon superbunching is interpreted as the result of constructive-destructive three-photon interference. The key to observe three-photon superbunching with superbunching pseudothermal light is that all the different ways to trigger a three-photon coincidence count are in principle indistinguishable, which is experimentally guaranteed by putting a pinhole before each rotating ground glass to ensure that all the passed photons are within the same coherence area. The observed three-photon superbunching is helpful to increase the visibility of ghost imaging and understand the physics of third-order interference of light.