Permutational symmetries for coincidence rates in multi-mode multi-photonic interferometry

Abstract

We obtain coincidence rates for passive optical interferometry by exploiting the permutational symmetries of partially distinguishable input photons, and our approach elucidates qualitative features of multi-photon coincidence landscapes. We treat the interferometer input as a product state of any number of photons in each input mode with photons distinguished by their arrival time. Detectors at the output of the interferometer count photons from each output mode over a long integration time. We generalize and prove the claim of Tillmann et al. [Phys. Rev. X 5 041015 (2015)] that coincidence rates can be elegantly expressed in terms of immanants. Immanants are functions of matrices that exhibit permutational symmetries and the immanants appearing in our coincidence-rate expressions share permutational symmetries with the input state. Our results are obtained by employing representation theory of the symmetric group to analyze systems of arbitrary number of photons in arbitrarily sized interferometers.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Wave-particle duality of many-body quantum states
• Characterizing four-body indistinguishability via symmetries
• Coincidence landscapes for polarized bosons
• Simultaneous sorting many quDits using different input ports
• Sparse interferometry for measuring multiphoton collective phase
• Sum rules in multiphoton coincidence rates
• Generalized Interference of Fermions and Bosons