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

The interference of two photons at a beam splitter 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 s...

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Veröffentlicht in:Optics letters 2018-08, Vol.43 (16), p.3806-3809
Hauptverfasser: Aragoneses, Andrés, Islam, Nurul T, Eggleston, Michael, Lezama, Arturo, Kim, Jungsang, Gauthier, Daniel J
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:The interference of two photons at a beam splitter 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.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/ol.43.003806