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Physical Review A

Demonstration of complementarity between path information and interference with thermal light

Ling-Yu Dou, Yaron R. Silberberg, Xin-Bing Song

Published Jan 15, 2019• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report an experimental demonstration of complementarity between path information and interference in second-order correlation with thermal light. The key apparatus is a Sagnac interferometer in which an off-axis slit is inserted. Two orthogonal thermal light beams travel through the slit clockwise and anticlockwise in the interferometer. The second-order interference fringes vanish when the path information is acquired. The interference fringes are revived when the path information is effaced.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.99.013825

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We report an experimental demonstration of complementarity between path information and interference in second-order correlation with thermal light. The key apparatus is a Sagnac interferometer in which an off-axis slit is inserted. Two orthogonal thermal light beams travel through the slit clockwise and anticlockwise in the interferometer. The second-order interference fringes vanish when the path information is acquired. The interference fringes are revived when the path information is effaced.
We report an experimental demonstration for a counter-intuitive phenomenon in multi-path interferometer with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZIs) with two correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1/3. Here, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light.
Complementarity is usually considered as a phenomenon of microscopic systems. In this paper, we report an experimental observation of complementarity in correlated double-slit interference with a pseudothermal light source. The thermal light beam is divided into test and reference beams which are correlated with each other. The double slit is set in the test arm, and an interference pattern can be observed in the intensity correlation between the two arms. The experimental results show that the disappearance of the interference fringe depends on whether which-path information is gained through the reference arm. The experiment therefore shows complementarity occurring in the macroscopic domain.
Complementarity is usually considered as a phenomenon of microscopic systems. In this paper we report an experimental observation of complementarity in the correlated double-slit interference with a pseudothermal light source. The thermal light beam is divided into test and reference beams which are correlated with each other. The double-slit is set in the test arm, and the interference pattern can be observed in the intensity correlation between the two arms. The experimental results show that the disappearance of interference fringe depends on whether which-path information is gained through the reference arm. The experiment therefore witnesses the complementarity occurring in a macroscopic system.
We report the observation of a counterintuitive phenomenon in multipath correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interfer- ometers (UMZIs) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1=3. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer, which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multiphoton interferometry.
We report observation of a counter-intuitive phenomenon in multi-path correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZI) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1/3. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multi-photon interferometry.
We report observation of a counter-intuitive phenomenon in multi-path correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZI) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1/3. Surprisingly, the second-order inter- ference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multi-photon interferometry.