Bounding the outcome of a two-photon interference measurement using weak coherent states

Abstract

Interference of two photons at a beamsplitter is at the core of many quantum photonic technologies, such as quantum key distribution or linear-optics quantum computing. Observing high-visibility interference is challenging because of the difficulty of realizing indistinguishable single-photon sources. Here, we perform a two-photon interference experiment using phase-randomized weak coherent states with different mean photon numbers. We place a tight upper bound on the expected coincidences for the case when the incident wavepackets contain single photons, allowing us to observe the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. We find that the interference visibility is at least as large as 0.995${}_{-0.013}^{+0.005}$.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between independent III-V on silicon waveguide integrated lasers
• Violating Bell inequality using weak coherent states
• Single-photon characteristics of superposed weak coherent states
• Full statistics of ideal homodyne detection using real (noisy) local oscillator
• Experimental interference of uncorrelated photons
• Characterizing Bell state analyzer using weak coherent pulses