Lee GH, Im DG, Kim Y, Kim US, Kim YH. Observation of second-order interference beyond the coherence time with true thermal photons.
OPTICS LETTERS 2020;
45:6748-6751. [PMID:
33325887 DOI:
10.1364/ol.413287]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2020] [Accepted: 11/20/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
It has recently been shown that counter-intuitive Franson-like second-order interference can be observed with a pair of classically correlated pseudo thermal light beams and two separate unbalanced interferometers (UIs): the second-order interference visibility remains fixed at 1/3 even though the path length difference in each UI is increased significantly beyond the coherence length of the pseudo thermal light [Phys. Rev. Lett.119, 223603 (2017)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.119.223603]. However, as the pseudo thermal beam itself originated from a long-coherence laser (and by using a rotating ground disk), there exists the possibility of a classical theoretical model to account for second-order interference beyond the coherence time on the long coherence time of the original laser beam. In this work, we experimentally explore this counter-intuitive phenomenon with a true thermal photon source generated via quantum thermalization, i.e., obtaining a mixed state from a pure two-photon entangled state. This experiment not only demonstrates the unique second-order coherence properties of thermal light clearly but may also open up remote sensing applications based on such effects.
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