Complete three photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference at a three port device

Abstract

We report the possibility of completely destructive interference of three indistinguishable photons on a three port device providing a generalisation of the well known Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of two indistinguishable photons on a two port device. Our analysis is based on the underlying mathematical framework of SU(3) transformations rather than SU(2) transformations. We show the completely destructive three photon interference for a large range of parameters of the three port device and point out the physical origin of such interference in terms of the contributions from different quantum paths. As each output port can deliver zero to three photons the device generates higher dimensional entanglement. In particular, different forms of entangled states of qudits can be generated depending on the device parameters. Our system is different from a symmetric three port beam splitter which does not exhibit a three photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference.

12 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables

References in corpus (8)

• Silica-on-Silicon Waveguide Quantum Circuits
• Photonic Boson Sampling in a Tunable Circuit
• Multimode quantum interference of photons in multiport integrated devices
• Zero-Transmission Law for Multiport Beam Splitters
• Transport and Quantum Walk of Nonclassical Light in Coupled Waveguides
• Multiboson Correlation Interferometry with arbitrary single-photon pure states
• Non-classical interference in integrated 3D multiports
• Four-Photon Interference with Asymmetric Beam Splitters