Direct observation of photon pairs at a single output port of a beam-splitter interferometer

Giovanni Di Giuseppe; Mete Atatüre; Matthew D. Shaw; Alexander V. Sergienko; Bahaa E. A. Saleh; Malvin C. Teich; Aaron J. Miller; Sae Woo Nam; John Martinis

doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.68.063817

Direct observation of photon pairs at a single output port of a beam-splitter interferometer

Giovanni Di Giuseppe, Mete Atatüre, Matthew D. Shaw, Alexander V. Sergienko, Bahaa E. A. Saleh, Malvin C. Teich, Aaron J. Miller, Sae Woo Nam, and John Martinis

Phys. Rev. A 68, 063817 – Published 16 December 2003

Abstract

Quantum theory predicts that two indistinguishable photons incident on a beam-splitter interferometer exit together (the pair emerges randomly from one port or the other). We use a special photon-number-resolving energy detector for a direct observation of this quantum-interference phenomenon. Simultaneous measurements from two such detectors, one at each beam-splitter-interferometer output port, confirm the absence of cross coincidences. Photon-number-resolving detectors are expected to find use in other quantum-optics and quantum-information-processing experiments.

Received 22 May 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.68.063817

Authors & Affiliations

Giovanni Di Giuseppe^1,*, Mete Atatüre^2,†, Matthew D. Shaw^1,‡, Alexander V. Sergienko^1,2, Bahaa E. A. Saleh¹, Malvin C. Teich^1,2, Aaron J. Miller³, Sae Woo Nam³, and John Martinis^3,§

¹Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Quantum Imaging Laboratory, Boston University, 8 Saint Mary’s Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
²Department of Physics, Quantum Imaging Laboratory, Boston University, 8 Saint Mary’s Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
³National Institute of Standards and Technology, Mail Code 814, 325 Broadway, Boulder, Colorado 80395, USA

^*Also at Istituto Elettrotecnico Nazionale G. Ferraris, Strada delle Cacce 91, I-10153 Torino, Italy.
^†Present address: Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Hönggerberg HPT, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
^‡Present address: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
^§URL: http://www.bu.edu/qil

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Vol. 68, Iss. 6 — December 2003

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