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Manipulating conditional photon statistics of lasers via second-order interference and post-selections

Kang-Hee Hong, Jisung Jung, Young‐Wook Cho, Sang-Wook Han, Sung Moon, Kyunghwan Oh, Yong‐Su Kim, Yoon-Ho Kim

Published Jan 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently it has been reported that photon anti-bunching can be obtained via second-order interference of mutually incoherent weak lasers under a proper post-selection scheme [Phys. Rev. A 92, 033855 (2015); Opt. Express 24, 19574 (2016)]. Here, we report theoretical analysis on the limits of manipulating conditional photon statistics of lasers via interference and post-selections.

DOI
10.1364/cleopr.2018.w3a.109

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Similar to interferences in classical optics that can combine two waves to produce no output or more output than input, multiphoton interferences can produce, for instance, anti-bunched light by admixing squeezed (bunched) and laser (uncorrelated) light. The general case of quantum-field interferences, that can be self- or externally realized in coherently driven quantum sources, leads to a classification of conventional and unconventional photon statistics, as discussed by Elena del Valle and co-workers in article number 1900279.
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Controlling the photon statistics of light is paramount for quantum science and technologies. Recently, we demonstrated that transmitting resonant laser light past an ensemble of two-level emitters can result in a stream of single photons or excess photon pairs. This transformation is due to quantum interference between the transmitted laser light and the incoherently scattered photon pairs [Prasad et al., Nat. Photonics 14, 719 (2020)NPAHBY1749-488510.1038/s41566-020-0692-z]. Here, using the dispersion of the atomic medium, we actively control the relative quantum phase between these two components. We thereby realize a tunable two-photon interferometer and observe interference fringes in the normalized photon coincidence rate. When tuning the relative phase, the coincidence rate varies periodically, giving rise to a continuous modification of the photon statistics from antibunching to bunching. Beyond the fundamental insight that there exists a tunable quantum phase between incoherent and coherent light that dictates the photon statistics, our results lend themselves to the development of novel quantum light sources.