Macroscopic Hong-Ou-Mandel interference

Abstract

We report on a Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference experiment for quantum states with photon numbers per mode as large as 10^6 generated via high-gain parametric down conversion (PDC). The standard technique of coincidence counting leads in this case to a dip with a very low visibility. By measuring, instead of coincidence rate, the variance of the photon-number difference, we observe a peak with 99.99% visibility. From the shape of the peak, one can infer information about the temporal mode structure of the PDC radiation, including the degree of frequency/time entanglement.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Quantum Beat of Two Single Photons
• Quantum-inspired interferometry with chirped laser pulses
• Interference of dissimilar photon sources
• Accessing the purity of a single photon by the width of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference
• Two-photon interference of weak coherent laser pulses recalled from separate solid-state quantum memories

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Engineering the Frequency Spectrum of Bright Squeezed Vacuum via Group Velocity Dispersion in an SU(1,1) Interferometer
• Quantifying the mesoscopic quantum coherence of approximate NOON states and spin-squeezed two-mode Bose-Einstein condensates
• Interplay of nonclassicality and entanglement of two-mode Gaussian fields generated in optical parametric processes
• Understanding high gain twin beam sources using cascaded stimulated emission
• Leggett-Garg tests of macro-realism for multi-particle systems including double-well Bose-Einstein condensates
• Testing macroscopic local realism using cat-states and Bell inequalities in time
• Coherent light in intense spatio-spectral twin beams
• Effects of interactions on the generalized Hong-Ou-Mandel effect
• Mesoscopic and macroscopic quantum correlations in photonic, atomic and optomechanical systems
• General mapping of multi-qu$d$it entanglement conditions to non-separability indicators for quantum optical fields
• Clearer visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel effect with correlation function based on rates rather than intensities
• Unfolding the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between heralded photons from narrowband twin beams
• Sub-shot-noise interferometry with two-mode quantum states