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Physical Review A

Revisiting ghost diffraction in the time domain: Reciprocal two-slit two-photon interference

Yoshiki O-oka, S. Fukatsu

Published Dec 2, 2024• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Temporal ghost diffraction (TGD) is observed by taking two-photon cross-correlation in the configuration of reciprocal two-slit diffraction where interference fringes develop on the light source side as opposed to the detector side. To this end, a narrow-band chaotic light source and a gated detector are used in the frequency-time domain, which emulate a randomly pointing incoherent light source and a stationary pinhole detector in the momentum-space domain, respectively. Spectral fringes with a signed visibility that closely follows a sinc function of the spectral bandwidth are clear evidence that legitimate TGD fringes due to two-photon interference have developed. This compares with the previous attempt [M. Bellini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 043602 (2003)] that is essentially ``ghost imaging of spectral fringes'' to be distinguished from TGD, which implies that the putative GD reports in the literature might demand a revision in terms of their physical insights.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.110.063505

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Temporal ghost diffraction (TGD) is observed by taking two-photon cross-correlation in the configuration of reciprocal two-slit diffraction where interference fringes develop on the light source side as opposed to the detector side. To this end, a narrow-band chaotic light source and a gated detector are used in the frequency-time domain, which emulate a randomly pointing incoherent light source and a stationary pinhole detector in the momentum-space domain, respectively. Spectral fringes with a signed visibility that closely follows a sinc function of the spectral bandwidth are clear evidence that legitimate TGD fringes due to two-photon interference have developed. This compares with the previous attempt [M. Bellini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 043602 (2003)] that is essentially ``ghost imaging of spectral fringes'' to be distinguished from TGD, which implies that the putative GD reports in the literature might demand a revision in terms of their physical insights.
Temporal ghost diffraction (TGD) is observed by taking two-photon cross-correlation in the configuration of reciprocal two-slit diffraction (2SD) where interference fringes develop on the light source side as opposed to the detector side. To this end, a narrow-band chaotic light source and a gated detector are used in the frequency-time domain, which emulate a randomly pointing incoherent light source and a stationary pinhole detector in the momentum-space domain, respectively. Spectral fringes with visibility that closely follows a sinc function of spectral bandwidth are clear evidence that legitimate TGD fringes due to two-photon interference develop even with classical light.
The time domain is a one-dimensional space, and hence the diffraction–interference in three dimensions is absent. However, ghost diffraction–interference (GD) building on a two-particle-enabled Young's experiment is still relevant. This is because fixed-timing detection can emulate pinhole detection at the core of GD. Here is demonstrated a different class of GD free of pinhole detection in the time domain. The bucket detection in ghost imaging enables it, which is best paraphrased as “ghost diffraction–interference via ghost imaging.”
The transverse spatial properties of the twin light beams of the down-conversion have been recently investigated in experiments using double-slit and coincidence measurements. Fringes are obtained, with a controlled degree of visibility, placing the slits in the signal beam and scanning the signal detector [direct interference---Phys. Rev. A 49, 4176 (1994)] and also, for the degenerated type II down-conversion, with slits in the signal beam and scanning the idler detector [ghost interference---Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 3600 (1995)]. The idea of a ghost source is used to discuss the direct interference experiment. Using a nondegenerated type I down-conversion, experimental results are obtained showing that the visibility of the ghost interference patterns can be controlled by the ghost source size, analogously as it can be done for a real light source. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
Single-photon interference experiments are attempted in the time domain using true single-photon streams. Self-heterodyning beats are clearly observed by letting the field associated with a single photon interfere with itself on a field-quadratic detector, which is a time analogue of Young's two-slit interference experiment. The temporal first-order coherence of single-photon fields, i.e., transient interference fringes, develops as cumulative detection events are mapped point-by-point onto a virtual capture frame by properly correlating the time-series data. The ability to single out photon counts at a designated timing paves the way for digital heterodyning with faint light for such use as phase measurement and quantum information processing.
An attempt is made to implement acoustic ghost diffraction in the space-momentum domain using ultrasound. The Hanbury Brown—Twiss effect helps ghost diffraction—interference fringes hidden in a large backdrop of first-order fringes to materialize only after making the two emitters mutually incoherent in a post-selective manner, which is leveraged by programmed decoherence. Cross correlation of phononic coherent states is taken in a reciprocal two-slit diffraction geometry so that nontrivial fringes due to virtual one-phonon diffraction—interference fringes emulated by two phonons emerge on the side of the transmitter as opposed to the receiver.
A double-slit ghost interference experiment performed on an entangled resource using type-II non-collinear degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) is demonstrated.The influence of the distance between the double-slit and the bucket detector preceded by a pinhole is studied.The experimental results show that the interference fringes become increasingly distinct with higher visibility when the pinhole-double-slit distance increases.A first-order classical theory based on the Klyshko's two-photon advanced-wave picture, and a second-order quantum-image theory are provided for explanations.The fitting results indicate that the divergence of the converted fluorescence significantly affects the ghost fringes.