Time-Resolved Two-Photon Quantum Interference
Abstract
The interference of two independent single-photon pulses impinging on a beam splitter is analysed in a generalised time-resolved manner. Different aspects of the phenomenon are elaborated using different representations of the single-photon wave packets, like the decomposition into single-frequency field modes or spatio-temporal modes matching the photonic wave packets. Both representations lead to equivalent results, and a photon-by-photon analysis reveals that the quantum-mechanical two-photon interference can be interpreted as a classical one-photon interference once a first photon is detected. A novel time-dependent quantum-beat effect is predicted if the interfering photons have different frequencies. The calculation also reveals that full two-photon fringe visibility can be achieved under almost any circumstances by applying a temporal filter to the signal.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0308024,
title = {Time-Resolved Two-Photon Quantum Interference},
author = {T. Legero and T. Wilk and A. Kuhn and G. Rempe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0308024},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures