We examine a recent proposal to show the presence of nonlocal Pancharatnam type geometric phases in a quantum mechanical treatment of intensity interferometry measurements upon inclusion of polarizing elements in the setup. It is shown that a completely classical statistical treatment of such effects is adequate for practical purposes. Further we show that the phase angles that appear in the correlations, while at first sight appearing to resemble Pancharatnam phases in their mathematical structure, cannot actually be interpreted in that manner. We also describe a simpler Mach-Zehnder type setup where similar effects can be observed without use of the paraxial approximation.
It is shown that EPR correlations are the angular analogue to the Hanbury-Brown--Twiss effect. As insight provided by this model, it is seen that, analysis of the EPR experiment requires conditional probabilities which do not admit the derivation of Bell inequalities.
This paper discusses our recent work on developing the matter wave analogs to the Hanbury Brown Twiss experiment. We discuss experiments using cold atoms, both bosons and fermions, both coherent and incoherent. Simple concepts from classical and quantum optics suffice to understand most of the results, but the ideas can also be traced back to the work of Einstein on the thermodynamics of Bose gases.
We have measured antinormally ordered Hanbury-Brown--Twiss correlations for coherent states of electromagnetic field by using stimulated parametric down-conversion process. Photons were detected by stimulated emission, rather than by absorption, so that the detection responded not only to actual photons but also to zero-point fluctuations via spontaneous emission. The observed correlations were distinct from normally ordered ones as they showed excess positive correlations, i.e., photon bunching effects, which arose from the thermal nature of zero-point fluctuations.
We present a computer simulation model for the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment that is entirely particle-based and reproduces the results of wave theory. The model is solely based on experimental facts, satisfies Einstein's criterion of local causality and does not require knowledge of the solution of a wave equation. The simulation model is fully consistent with earlier work and provides another demonstration that it is possible to give a particle-only description of wave phenomena, rendering the concept of wave-particle duality superfluous.
The Hanbury Brown Twiss (HBT) interferometer was proposed to observe intensity correlations of starlight to measure a star's angular diameter. As the intensity of light that reaches the detector from a star is very weak, one cannot usually get a workable signal-to-noise ratio. We propose an improved HBT interferometric scheme introducing optical parametric amplifiers into the system, to amplify the correlation signal, which is used to calculate the angular diameter. With the use of optical parametric amplifiers, the signal-to-noise ratio can be increased up to 400 percent.
Difference-phase (or Hanbury Brown - Twiss type) intensity interference of classical light is considered in higher orders in the intensity. It is shown that, while the visibility of sum-phase (NOON-type) interference for classical sources drops with the order of interference, the visibility of difference-phase interference has opposite behavior. For three-photon and four-photon interference of two coherent sources, the visibility can be as high as 81.8% and 94.4%, respectively. High-visibility three-photon and four-photon interference of space-time and polarization types has been observed in e…
The Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) effect, at the quantum level, is essentially an interference of one particle with another, as opposed to interference of a particle with itself. Conventional treatments of identical particles encounter difficulties while dealing with entanglement. A recently introduced label-free approach to indistinguishable particles is described, and is used to analyze the HBT effect. Quantum wave-packets have been used to provide a better understanding of the quantum interpretation of the HBT effect. The effect is demonstrated for two independent particles governed by Bose-Ein…
In the present work we analyze the possibility of detecting some deformed dispersion relations, emerging in some quantum--gravity models, resorting to the so--called Hanbury--Brown--Twiss effect. It will be proved that in some scenarios the possibilities are not pessimistic. Forsooth, for some values of the corresponding parameters the aforementioned effect could render interesting outcomes.
Electronic Hanbury Brown Twiss correlations are discussed for geometries in which transport is along adiabatically guided edge channels. We briefly discuss partition noise experiments and discuss the effect of inelastic scattering and dephasing on current correlations. We then consider a two-source Hanbury Brown Twiss experiment which demonstrates strikingly that even in geometries without an Aharonov-Bohm effect in the conductance matrix (second-order interference), correlation functions can (due to fourth-order interference) be sensitive to a flux. Interestingly we find that this fourth-orde…
Low energy elastic scattering between clouds of Bose condensed atoms leads to the well known s-wave halo with atoms emerging in all directions from the collision zone. In this paper we discuss the emergence of Hanbury Brown and Twiss coincidences between atoms scattered in nearly parallel directions. We develop a simple model that explains the observations in terms of an interference involving two pairs of atoms each associated with the elementary s wave scattering process.
Adopting a quantum information perspective, we analyse the correlations in the thermal light beams used to demonstrate the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. We find that the total correlations measured by the Renyi mutual information match the normalised intensity correlations in the regime of low source intensity. Genuine quantum correlations in the form of discord are relevant in such regime but get washed out with increasing source intensity. This provides a new angle on the issue about the nature--quantum versus classical--of the effect.
Intensity-intensity correlations are studied for light signals stemming from the spontaneous decay of surface plasmon oscillations, generated in the Kretschmann geometry. Non-classical photon statistics and the the transition from antibunching to bunching of the electron counts have been found experimentally and analysed on a new theoretical basis.
We analyze a Hanbury Brown Twiss geometry in which particles are injected from two independent sources into a mesoscopic electrical conductor. The set-up has the property that all partial waves end in different reservoirs without generating any single particle interference. There is no single particle Aharonov-Bohm effect. However, exchange effects lead to two-particle Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in current correlations. We demonstrate that the two-particle Aharonov-Bohm effect is connected to orbital entanglement which can be used for violation of a Bell Inequality.
We report measurements of Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlation of coherent light transmitted through disordered one-dimensional photonic lattices. Although such a lattice exhibits transverse Anderson localization when a single input site is excited, uniform excitation precludes its observation. By examining the Hanbury Brown--Twiss correlation for a uniformly excited disordered lattice, we observe intensity anticorrelations associated with photon antibunching--a signature of non-Gaussian statistics. Although the measured average intensity distribution is uniform, transverse Anderson localizatio…
The current manuscript employs the parity and time reversal symmetry in the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment. For this purpose, we develop a general scattering matrix framework founded on the concatenation of many individual compounded scattering processes on the setup. In this way, we derive the general scattering matrix of a parity and time reversal symmetric Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment (HBT-PT). Within such scattering formulation, we propose a theoretical framework which provides how to measure the symmetry of the system through the correlation function of a pair of particles transmitted t…
A fundamental property of a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is long-range coherence, however, in systems of lower dimensionality, not only is the long range coherence destroyed, but additional states of matter are predicted to exist. One such state is a `transverse condensate', first predicted by van Druten and Ketterle [Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 549 (1997)], in which the gas condenses in the transverse dimensions of a highly anisotropic trap while remaining thermal in the longitudinal dimension. Here we detect the transition from a three-dimensional thermal gas to a gas undergoing…
A longstanding goal of Akira Tonomura was to observe Hanbury Brown--Twiss anti-correlations between electrons in a field-emission free electron beam. The experimental results were reported in his 2011 paper with Tetsuji Kodama and Nobuyuki Osakabe [Phys. Rev. A 83, 063616 (2011)]. An open issue in such a measurement is whether the observed anti-correlations arise from quantum statistics, or are simply produced by Coulomb repulsion between electrons. In this paper we describe a simple classical model of Coulomb effects to estimate their effects in electron beam interferometry experiments, and c…
We have studied one-body and two-body correlation functions in a ballistically expanding, non-interacting atomic cloud in the presence of gravity. We find that the correlation functions are equivalent to those at thermal equilibrium in the trap with an appropriate rescaling of the coordinates. We derive simple expressions for the correlation lengths and give some physical interpretations. Finally a simple model to take into account finite detector resolution is discussed.
The Hanbury Brown--Twiss effect is one of the celebrated phenomenologies of modern physics that accommodates equally well classical (interferences of waves) and quantum (correlations between indistinguishable particles) interpretations. The effect was discovered in the late thirties with a basic observation of Hanbury Brown that radio-pulses from two distinct antennas generate signals on the oscilloscope that wiggle similarly to the naked eye. When Hanbury Brown and his mathematician colleague Twiss took the obvious step to propose bringing the effect in the optical range, they met with consid…
Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensing and transduction. We used quantum optical control techniques to conditionally generate single-phonon Fock states of a nanomechanical resonator. We performed a Hanbury Brown and Twiss-type experiment that verified the nonclassical nature of the phonon state without requiring full state reconstruct…
Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) correlations, i.e. correlations in far-field intensity fluctuations, yield fundamental information on the quantum statistics of light sources, as highlighted after the discovery of photon bunching. Drawing on the analogy between photons and atoms, similar measurements have been performed for matter-wave sources, probing density fluctuations of expanding ultracold Bose gases. Here we use two-point density correlations to study how coherence is gradually established when crossing the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) threshold. Our experiments reveal a persistent mul…
We consider possible detection of nonclassicality of primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) by applying Hanbury Brown - Twiss (HBT) interferometry to cosmology. We characterize the nonclassicality of PGWs in terms of sub-Poissonian statistics that can be measured by the HBT interferometry. We show that the presence of classical sources during inflation makes us possible to detect nonclassical PGWs with the HBT interferometry. We present two examples that realize the classical sources during inflation. It turns out that PGWs with frequencies higher than 10 kHz enable us to detect their nonclassi…
In this work we provide theoretical background for the analysis of second-order correlation functions in experiments performed at the soft x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). Typically, soft x-ray beamlines at XFELs are equipped by the variable line spacing (VLS) monochromators. We perform examination of the beam propagation through such VLS monochromator taking specially into account the interplay between the finite monochromator resolution and the exit slits width. We then provide general analysis of the second-order correlation intensities in spectral and spatial domains. Finally, we connec…
Superconductors can be classified as topological or not based on whether time-reversal symmetry (TRS), chiral symmetry, and particle-hole symmetry are preserved or not. Further, topological superconductors can also be classified as chiral or helical. In this paper, using Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT) shot noise correlations and the non-local conductance, we probe metal/2D unconventional superconductor/metal junctions to understand better the pairing topological vs. non-topological or helical vs. chiral or nodal vs. gapful. We see that HBT correlations are asymmetric as a function of bias volta…
Two-photon superbunching of pseudothermal light is observed with single-mode continuous-wave laser light in a linear optical system. By adding more two-photon paths via three rotating ground glasses,g(2)(0) = 7.10 is experimentally observed. The second-order temporal coherence function of superbunching pseudothermal light is theoretically and experimentally studied in detail. It is predicted that the degree of coherence of light can be increased dramatically by adding more multi-photon paths. For instance, the degree of the second- and third-order coherence of the superbunching pseudothermal l…
The separability of the continuous-variable EPR state can be tested with Hanbury-Brown and Twiss type interference. The second-order visibility of such interference can provide an experimental test of entanglement. It is shown that time-resolved interference leads to the Hong, Ou and Mandel deep, that provides a signature of quantum non-separability for pure and mixed EPR states. A Hanbury-Brown and Twiss type witness operator can be constructed to test the quantum nature of the EPR entanglement.
This paper shows that in intensity correlation measurements there will be clear and unambiguous signals that new-physics particles are, or aren't, parabosons. For a parabosonic field in a dominant single-mode, there is a diagonal P-representation in the "even and odd coherent states" basis. It is used to analyze zero-time-interval intensity correlations of parabosons in a maximum-entropic state. As the mean number of parabosons decreases, there is a monotonic reduction to (2/p) of the constant bosonic ``factor of two'' proportionality of the second-order versus the squared first-order intensit…
Photonic quantum technologies such as quantum cryptography, photonic quantum metrology, photonic quantum simulators and computers will largely benefit from highly scalable and small footprint quantum photonic circuits. To perform fully on-chip quantum photonic operations, three basic building blocks are required: single-photon sources, photonic circuits and single-photon detectors. Highly integrated quantum photonic chips on silicon and related platforms have been demonstrated incorporating only one or two of these basic building blocks. Previous implementations of all three components were ma…
Intensity-interferometry based on Hanbury-Brown and Twiss's seminal experiment for determining the radius of the star Sirius formed the basis for developing the quantum theory of light. To date, the principle of this experiment is used in various forms across different fields of quantum optics, imaging and astronomy. Though, the technique is powerful, it has not been generalized for objects at different temperatures. Here, we address this problem using a generating functional formalism by employing the P-function representation of quantum-thermal light. Specifically, we investigate the photon …
In Hanbury-Brown-Twiss interferometry measurements using identical bosons, the chaoticity parameter lambda has been introduced phenomenologically to represent the momentum correlation function at zero relative momentum. It is useful to study an exactly solvable problem in which the lambda parameter and its dependence on the coherence properties of the boson system can be worked out in great detail. We are therefore motivated to study the state of a gas of noninteracting identical bosons at various temperatures held together in a harmonic oscillator potential that arises either externally or fr…
We propose a polarised intensity interferometry experiment, which measures the nonlocal Pancharatnam phase acquired by a pair of Hanbury Brown-Twiss photons. The setup involves two polarised thermal sources illuminating two polarised detectors. Varying the relative polarisation angle of the detectors introduces a two photon geometric phase. Local measurements at either detector do not reveal the effects of the phase, which is an optical analog of the multiparticle Aharonov-Bohm effect. The geometric phase sheds light on the three slit experiment and suggests ways of tuning entanglement.
Quantum Hall edge modes are chiral while quantum spin Hall edge modes are helical. However, unlike chiral edge modes which always occur in topological systems, quasi-helical edge modes may arise in a trivial insulator too. These trivial quasi-helical edge modes are not topologically protected and therefore need to be distinguished from helical edge modes arising due to topological reasons. Earlier conductance measurements were used to identify these helical states, in this work we report on the advantage of using the non local shot noise as a probe for the helical nature of these states as als…
Large spatial density fluctuations in high-energy heavy-ion collisions can come from many sources: initial transverse density fluctuations, non-central collisions, phase transitions, surface tension, and fragmentations. The common presence of some of these sources in high-energy heavy-ion collisions suggests that large scale density fluctuations may often occur. The detection of large density fluctuations by single-event Hanbury-Brown-Twiss interferometry in heavy-ion collisions will provide useful information on density fluctuations and the dynamics of heavy-ion collisions.
We show that a one dimensional device supporting a pair of Majorana bound states at its ends can produce remarkable Hanbury-Brown Twiss like interference effects between well separated Dirac fermions of pertinent energies. We find that the simultaneous scattering of two incoming electrons or two incoming holes from the Majorana bound states leads exclusively to an electron-hole final state. This "anti-bunching" in electron-hole internal pseudospin space can be detected through current-current correlations. Further, we show that, by scattering appropriate spin polarized electrons from the Major…
In this paper we investigate the close relationship between Dicke superradiance, originally predicted for an ensemble of two-level atoms in entangled states, and the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, initially established in astronomy to determine the dimensions of classical light sources like stars. By studying the state evolution of the fields produced by classical sources -- defined by a positive Glauber-Sudarshan P function -- when recording intensity correlations of higher order in a generalized Hanbury Brown and Twiss setup we find that the angular distribution of the last detected photon,…
An experiment is proposed to show that after initial frequency and polarization selection, classical thermal light from two independent sources can be made path-polarization entangled. Such light will show new intensity-intensity correlations involving both path and polarization phases, formally similar to those for four-particle GHZ states. For fixed polarization phases, the correlations reduce to the Hanbury Brown-Twiss phase correlations. It is also shown that these classical correlations violate noncontextuality.
Intensity interferometry (Hanbury Brown - Twiss effect) is an interesting and useful concept that is usually presented as a manifestation of the quantum statistics of indistinguishable particles. Here, by exploiting possibilities for project and entanglement, we substantially widen the scope of its central idea, removing the requirement of indistinguishability. We thereby potentially gain access to a host of new observables, including subtle polarization correlations and entanglement itself. Our considerations also shed light on the physical significance of superselection.
In this lecture, I first present my views on the second vs the first quantum revolution, then describe the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect with photons, and indicate why it was so important in the development of modern quantum optics. The presentation of our experiments on the HBT effect with atoms will allow me to emphasize the analogies but also the increased richness of the effect when going from photons to atoms. I will similarly describe the HOM effect for photons and its significance, and then present the analogous experiment with atoms. In conclusion, I will put these two effects in the …
A pairwise correlation function in relative momentum space is discussed as a tool to characterize the properties of an incoherent source of non-interacting Abelian anyons. This is analogous to the Hanbury--Brown Twiss effect for particles with fractional statistics in two dimensions. In particular, using a flux tube model for anyons, the effects of source shape and quantum statistics on a two-particle correlation function are examined. Such a tool may prove useful in the context of quantum computing and other experimental applications where studying anyon sources are of interest.
We study quantum and classical Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations in waveguide lattices. We develop a theory for the propagation of photon pairs in the lattice, predicting the emergence of nontrivial quantum interferences unique to lattice systems. Experimentally, we observe the classical counterpart of these interferences using intensity correlation measurements. We discuss the correspondence between the classical and quantum correlations, and consider path-entangled input states which do not have a classical analogue. Our results demonstrate that waveguide lattices can be used as a robust and …
We study the effect of interactions on the bosonic two-particle quantum walk and its corresponding spatial correlations. The combined effect of interactions and Hanbury-Brown Twiss interference results in unique spatial correlations which depend on the strength of the interaction, but not on its sign. The results are explained in light of the two-particle spectrum and the physics of attractively and repulsively bound pairs. We experimentally measure the weak interaction limit of these effects in nonlinear photonic lattices. Finally, we discuss an experimental approach to observe the strong int…
We report the first intensity correlation measured with star light since Hanbury Brown and Twiss' historical experiments. The photon bunching $g^{(2)}(τ, r=0)$, obtained in the photon counting regime, was measured for 3 bright stars, $α$ Boo, $α$ CMi, and $β$ Gem. The light was collected at the focal plane of a 1~m optical telescope, was transported by a multi-mode optical fiber, split into two avalanche photodiodes and digitally correlated in real-time. For total exposure times of a few hours, we obtained contrast values around $2\times10^{-3}$, in agreement with the expectation for chaotic s…
