Space-time interference of spontaneously emitted photons

Iu. L. Dobrynin, V. V. Lomonosov

L.J. Wang, G.-K. Rhee

Summary form only given.In the process of induced coherence without induced emission, photons spontaneously emitted from two parametric downconverters exhibit interference when the possibility of identifying the photon's path is removed. On the other hand, when it becomes possible to perform an auxiliary measurement to obtain such path information, even in the absence of any direct disturbance to the photons, the interference disappears. In this paper, we measure the space-time relation between the event making it possible to identify the photon's path and the resulting disappearance of interference.

Imad I. Faruque, Ben M. Burridge, Massimo Borghi +2 more

We have directly measured the joint spectral phase of spontaneously emitted photon-pairs for the first time. We have devised a novel tomographic method using quantum interference of bi-photon functions. This method can potentially be used for quantum sensing.

Jorrit Visser, Gerard Nienhuis

Rainer Kaltenbaek, B. Blauensteiner, Markus Aspelmeyer +1 more

Martin Ligare, Ryan Oliveri

We calculate spatial localization and phase properties of spontaneously emitted photons. Our model is simple yet fully quantized: the emitting atom is a two-level atom located in a one-dimensional multimode optical cavity. Although the photon state vector does not have a position-space representation, the expectation value of the square of the electric field operator (intensity) is spatially localized and this pattern shifts at the speed of light. The emitted photon exhibits classical-like phase properties in the intensity expectation value when it “interferes with itself” after reflection. The phase properties of the emitted radiation are also evident at times sufficiently long for the radiation to have returned to the emitting atom before the decay of excited atomic state is complete.