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Annalen der Physik

Temporally Correlated Narrowband Biphoton Interference Based on Mach–Zehnder Interferometer

Da Zhang, Irfan Ahmed, Lin Hao, Yin Cai, Changbiao Li, Yiqi Zhang, Yanpeng Zhang

Published Oct 14, 2019• 1 citation

Abstract

Abstract Since early 1990s, Mach–Zehnder interferometer has been used to investigate the interference of biphoton wave packets. Due to subpicosecond time coherence of biphoton generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion process, some physical processes are ignored in the interferometer, most likely the biphoton time‐domain interference. Here, the two‐photon interference phenomenon based on the Mach–Zehnder interferometer is theoretically studied, where the correlated photon pairs are produced by the four‐wave mixing in atomic system. In particular, the quantum interference effect to effectively control the coherent time of two‐photon by adjusting the input delay is used. In the damped Rabi oscillation regime, two‐photon bunching and antibunching effects are observed. In addition, in the group‐delay regime, the interference between biphoton precursor, slow‐light wave packets and also in between the precursor and the slow‐light wave packets is observed, which had never been reported before. These results may have potential applications in the fields of biphoton shaping and quantum information processing.

DOI: 10.1002/andp.201900300

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We propose an experiment that permits observation of the de Broglie two-photon wave packet behavior for a pair of photons, using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. It is based on the use of pulsed lasers to generate pairs of photons via spontaneous parametric down-conversion and the post-selection of events. It differs from previous realizations by the use of a third time-correlated photon to engineer the state of the photons. The same technique can give us which-path information via an ``interaction-free'' experiment and can be used in other experiments on the foundations of quantum mechanics related to wave-particle duality and to nonlocality.

Two types of interference were observed using two-photon spontaneous parametric radiation from two nonlinear interaction regions. Two experimental setups analogous to the Young and Mach-Zehnder interferometers were used. An interesting feature of the two-photon Young interference is the opposite conditions for its observation by two different methods: by measuring intensity of light at a single frequency and by measuring correlation of intensities at two conjugated frequencies (method of coincidences). Two-photon Mach-Zehnder interference resembles the Ramsey method of separated fields, which is used in beam spectroscopy. A simple macroscopic quantum model agrees well with the experimental results and enables their interpretation in terms of ``biphotons'' carrying information about the pump phase.

We present experimental demonstrations of two-photon interference involving temporally separated photons within two types of interferometers: a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and a polarization-based Michelson interferometer. The two-photon states are probabilistically prepared in a symmetrically superposed state within the two interferometer arms by introducing a large time delay between two input photons; this state is composed of two temporally separated photons, which are in two different or the same spatial modes. We then observe two-photon interference fringes involving both the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference effect and the interference of path-entangled two-photon states simultaneously in a single interferometric setup. The observed two-photon interference fringes provide simultaneous observation of the interferometric properties of the single-photon and two-photon wavepackets. The observations can also facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the origins of the interference phenomena arising from spatially bunched/anti-bunched two-photon states comprised of two temporally separated photons within the interferometer arms.

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