Accessing the purity of a single photon by the width of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to determine the spectral purity of single photons. The technique is based on the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference between a single photon state and a suitably prepared coherent field. We show that the temporal width of the HOM dip is not only related to reciprocal of the spectral width but also to the underlying quantum coherence. Therefore, by measuring the width of both the HOM dip and the spectrum one can directly quantify the degree of spectral purity. The distinct advantage of our proposal is that it obviates the need for perfect mode matching, since it does not rely on the visibility of the interference. Our method is particularly useful for characterizing the purity of heralded single photon states.

Extended version, 16 pages, 9 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Parameter estimation of time and frequency shifts with generalized HOM interferometry
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• Quantum metrology timing limits of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer and of general two-photon measurements
• High-order dispersion effects in two-photon interference
• Double-Fock Superposition Interferometry for Differential Diagnosis of Decoherence
• Cycle Index Polynomials and Generalized Quantum Separability Tests
• Enhancing qubit readout with Bayesian Learning
• Bayesian mitigation of measurement errors in multiqubit experiments
• Mean propagation velocity of multiphoton wave-packet states with nonzero Lorentz-invariant mass