Biphoton Interference in a Double-Slit Experiment

Abstract

A double-slit experiment with entangled photons is theoretically analyzed. It is shown that, under suitable conditions, two entangled photons of wavelength $\lambda$ can behave like a \emph{biphoton} of wavelength $\lambda /2$. The interference of these biphotons, passing through a double-slit can be obtained by detecting both photons of the pair at the same position. This is in agreement with the results of an earlier experiment. More interestingly, we show that even if the two entangled photons are separated by a polarizing beam splitter, they can still behave like a biphoton of wavelength $\lambda /2$. In this modified setup, the two separated photons passing through two different double-slits, surprisingly show an interference corresponding to a wavelength $\lambda /2$, instead of $\lambda$ which is the wavelength of each photon. We point out two experiments that have been carried out in different contexts, which saw the effect predicted here without realizing this connection.

Published version

References in corpus (3)

• Transverse Entanglement Migration in Hilbert Space
• Two-particle interference of electron pairs on a molecular level
• Popper's Experiment: A Modern Perspective

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Gouy phase of type-I SPDC-generated biphotons
• Biphoton phase-space correlations from Gouy-phase measurements using double slits
• Sorkin parameter for type-I spontaneous parametric down-conversion biphotons and matter waves
• Characterizing the Generalized Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen State and Extensions