More Interference and Measurement Effects

Gerard J Milburn

Heonoh Kim, Sang Min Lee, Osung Kwon +1 more

Multiphoton interference effects can be measured with a single detector when two input photons are temporally well separated when compared with the dead time of the single-photon avalanche detector. Here we experimentally demonstrate that the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference effect can be observed with a single non-photon-number resolving detector via a time-delayed coincidence measurement of successive electrical signals from the detector. The two-photon interference experiment is performed by utilizing temporally well-separated pairwise weak coherent pulses, and the interference fringes are successfully measured with high visibility in the range of the limited upper bound for the weak coherent photon source.

Thomas Ihn

Beyond the basic interference effects introduced in Chapter 14, further interesting interference phenomena exist in semiconductor nanostructures, the discussion of which requires more prior knowledge. This chapter discusses the Fano effect in nanostructure transport that has been found in a number of very different experiments. Furthermore, it discusses experiments that measure the transmission phase in addition to the transmission probability using interferometric arrangements. Finally, the chapter returns to the topic of decoherence, and introduces experiments aiming at controlled decoherence of quantum states. This topic requires knowledge of interference and the basics of decoherence, and incorporates ideas of shot noise, the Aharonov–Bohm effect, the quantum Hall effect, double quantum dot physics, and the theory of quantum measurement.

Edward B. Manoukian

A. Marsman, Marko Horbatsch, Eric A. Hessels

The effects of quantum-mechanical interference with a far-off-resonant transition on saturated-absorption measurements of atomic fine-structure intervals are found to be substantially larger than measurement uncertainty, and it is shown how properly taking them into account brings several previous measurements into agreement.