Observation of Young's Double-Slit Interference with the Three-Photon N00N State

Abstract

Spatial interference of quantum mechanical particles exhibits a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics. A two-mode entangled state of N particles known as N00N state can give rise to non-classical interference. We report the first experimental observation of a three-photon N00N state exhibiting Young's double-slit type spatial quantum interference. Compared to a single-photon state, the three-photon entangled state generates interference fringes that are three times denser. Moreover, its interference visibility of $0.49\pm 0.09$ is well above the limit of 0.1 for spatial super-resolution of classical origin. The demonstration of spatial quantum interference by a N00N state composed of more than two photons represents an important step towards applying quantum entanglement to technologies such as lithography and imaging.

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• Experimental Realization of a Four-Photon Seven-Qubit Graph State for One-Way Quantum Computation
• Limits on manipulating conditional photon statistics via interference of weak lasers
• Experimental characterization of quantum polarization of three-photon states