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IEEE photonics journal

Measuring Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effect of Multi-Spatial-Mode Thermal Light at Ultrashort Timescale by Two-Photon Absorption

Zhiguo Tang, Bin Bai, Yu Zhou, Huaibin Zheng, Hui Chen, Jianbin Liu, Fuli Li, Zhuo Xu

Published Nov 7, 2018• 5 citations

Abstract

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.

DOI: 10.1109/jphot.2018.2879973

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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.

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.

We study the photon correlation properties of broadband parametric down-converted light. The measurement of the photon correlation is carried out thanks to a modified Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometer based on two photon absorption in GaAs detector. Since this method is not affected by the phase matching conditions of the detecting apparatus (so called "final state post-selection"), the detection bandwidth can be extremely large. This is illustrated by studying, with the same apparatus, the degree of second order coherence of parametric light in both degenerate and non-degenerate cases. We show that our experiment is able to determine the coherent as well as the incoherent contributions to the degree of second order coherence of parametric light with a time resolution in the fs range scale.

Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is the foundation for stellar intensity interferometry. However, it is a phase insensitive two-photon interference effect. Here we extend the HBT interferometer by mixing intensity-matched reference fields with the input fields before intensity correlation measurement. With the freely available coherent state serving as the reference field, we experimentally demonstrate the phase sensitive two-photon interference effect when the input fields are thermal fields in either continuous wave or non-stationary pulsed wave and measure the complete complex second-order coherence function of the input fields without bringing them together from separate locations. Moreover, we discuss how to improve the signal level by using the more realistic continuous wave broadband anti-bunched light fields as the reference field. Our investigations pave the way for developing new technology of remote sensing and interferometric imaging with applications in long baseline high-resolution astronomy.

Abstract Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is the foundation for stellar intensity interferometry. However, it is a phase insensitive two-photon interference effect. Here we extend the HBT interferometer by mixing a reference field with the input fields before intensity correlation measurement. With the freely available coherent state serving as the reference field, we experimentally demonstrate the phase sensitive two-photon interference effect when the input fields are thermal fields in either continuous wave or non-stationary pulsed wave and measure the complete complex second-order coherence function of the input fields without bringing them together from separate locations. Moreover, we discuss how to improve the signal level by using the more realistic continuous wave broadband anti-bunched light fields as the reference field. Our investigations pave the way for developing new technology of remote sensing and coherent imaging.