A Mean-Field Analogue of the Hong-Ou-Mandel Experiment With Bright Solitons

Abstract

In the present work, we theoretically propose and numerically illustrate a mean-field analogue of the Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment with bright solitons. More specifically, we scatter two solitons off of each other (in our setup, the bright solitons play the role of a classical analogue to the quantum photons of the original experiment), while the role of the beam splitter is played by a repulsive Gaussian barrier. In our classical scenario, distinguishability of the particles yields, as expected, a $0.5$ split mass on either side. Nevertheless, for very slight deviations from the completely symmetric scenario a near-perfect transmission i.e., a $|2,0>e$ or a $|0,2>$ state can be constructed instead, very similarly to the quantum mechanical output. We demonstrate this as a generic feature under slight variations of the relative soliton speed, or of the relative amplitude in a wide parametric regime. We also explore how variations of the properties of the "beam splitter" (i.e., the Gaussian barrier) affect this phenomenology.

15 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Formation of bright matter-wave solitons during the collapse of Bose-Einstein condensates
• Collisions of matter-wave solitons
• Bright solitons in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Fast soliton scattering by delta impurities
• Soliton splitting by external delta potentials
• Violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality with matter waves
• Bright matter-wave soliton collisions at narrow barriers
• Collisions of bright solitary matter waves
• Scattering bright solitons: quantum versus mean-field behavior

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Two-photon interference: the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect
• Quantum interferometers: principles and applications
• Effects of interactions on the generalized Hong-Ou-Mandel effect
• Atomic soliton transmission and induced collapse in scattering from a narrow barrier
• Performing Hong-Ou-Mandel-type Numerical Experiments with Repulsive Condensates: The case of Dark and Dark-bright Solitons
• Splitting and recombination of bright-solitary-matter waves
• Quantum-droplet interferometry