It is well known that in classical optics, the visibility of interference, in a two-beam light interference, is related to the optical coherence of the two beams. A wave-particle duality relation can be derived using this mutual coherence. The issue of wave-particle duality in classical optics is analyzed here, in the more general context of multipath interference. New definitions of interference visibility and path distinguishability have been introduced, which lead to a duality relation for multipath interference. The visibility is shown to be related to a new multi-point optical coherence function.
According to Bohr's principle of complementarity, a quanton can behave either as a wave or a particle, depending on the choice of the experimental setup. Some recent two-path interference experiments have devised methods where one can have a quantum superposition of the two choices, thus indicating that a quanton may be in a superposition of wave and particle nature. These experiments have been of interest from the point of view of Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. However, it has also been claimed that this experiment can violate complementarity. Here we theoretically analyze a multipath i…
An interferometer - no matter how clever the design - cannot reveal both the wave and particle behavior of a quantum system. This fundamental idea has been captured by inequalities, so-called wave-particle duality relations (WPDRs), that upper bound the sum of the fringe visibility (wave behavior) and path distinguishability (particle behavior). Another fundamental idea is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, stating that some pairs of observables cannot be known simultaneously. Recent work has unified these two principles for two-path interferometers. Here we extend this unification to $n$-pat…
We derive a generalized wave-particle duality relation for arbitrary multipath quantum interference phenomena. Beyond the conventional notion of the wave nature of a quantum system, i.e., the interference fringe visibility, we introduce a quantifier as the normalized quantum coherence, recently defined in the framework of quantum information theory. To witness the particle nature, we quantify the path distinguishability or the which-path information based on unambiguous quantum state discrimination. Then, the Bohr complementarity principle for multipath quantum interference can be stated as a …
Trace-distance-based complementarity relations in a multipath interferometer
School of Mathematics, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学数学学院）；School of Science, Beijing Information Science and Technology University（北京信息科技大学理学院）；Center for Quantum Information, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University（清华大学交叉信息研究院量子信息中心）
Recent times have seen a spurt of research activity focused on "completing" certain wave-particle duality relations using entanglement or polarization. These studies use a duality relation involving path-predictability, and not path-distinguishability. Quantum origins of these results are explored here, in the more general framework of multipath quantum interference. Multipath interference with a path-detector is theoretically analyzed to find the connection between predictability and distinguishability. It is shown that entanglement is what quantitatively connects distinguishability with pred…
The wave-particle duality demonstrates a competition relation between wave and particle behavior for a particle going through an interferometer. This duality can be formulated as an inequality, which upper bounds the sum of interference visibility and path information. However, if the particle is entangled with a quantum memory, then the bound may decrease. Here, we find the duality relation between coherence and path information for a particle going through a multipath interferometer in the presence of a quantum memory, offering an upper bound on the duality relation which is directly connect…
Famous double-slit or double-path experiments, implemented in a Young's or Mach-Zehnder interferometer, have confirmed the dual nature of quantum matter, When a stream of photons, neutrons, atoms, or molecules, passes through two slits, either wave-like interference fringes build up on a screen, or particle-like which-path distribution can be ascertained. These quantum objects exhibit both wave and particle properties but exclusively, depending on the way they are measured. In an equivalent Mach-Zehnder configuration, the object displays either wave or particle nature in the presence or absenc…
We theoretically demonstrate a counter-intuitive phenomenon in optical interferometry with a thermal source: the emergence of second-order interference between two pairs of correlated optical paths even if the time delay imprinted by each path in one pair with respect to each path in the other pair is much larger than the source coherence time. This fundamental effect could be useful for experimental simulations of small-scale quantum circuits and of $100\%$-visibility correlations typical of entangled states of a large number of qubits, with possible applications in high-precision metrology a…
The demonstration of optical multipath interference from a large number of quantum emitters is essential for the realization of many paradigmatic experiments in quantum optics. However, such interference remains still unexplored as it crucially depends on the sub-wavelength positioning accuracy and stability of all emitters. We present the observation of controlled interference of light scattered from strings of up to 53~trapped ions. The light scattered from ions localized in a harmonic trapping potential is collected along the ion crystal symmetry axis, which guarantees the spatial indisting…
I argue that quantum optical experiments that purport to refute Bohr's principle of complementarity (BPC) fail in their aim. Some of these experiments try to refute complementarity by refuting the so called particle-wave duality relations, which evolved from the Wootters-Zureck reformulation of BPC (WZPC). I therefore consider it important for my forgoing arguments to first recall the essential tenets of BPC, and to clearly separate BPC from WZPC, which I will argue is a direct contradiction of BPC. This leads to a need to consider the meaning of particle-wave duality relations and to question…
We investigate coherent backscattering of light by two harmonically trapped atoms in the light of quantitative quantum duality. Including recoil and Doppler shift close to an optical resonance, we calculate the interference visibility as well as the amount of which-path information, both for zero and finite temperature.
In a recent article Jan Sperling, Syamsundar De, Thomas Nitsche, Johannes Tiedau, Sonja Barkhofen, Benjamin Brecht, and Christine Silberhorn discuss the wave-particle duality using an experiment to demonstrate that "neither the wave nor the particle description is sufficient to predict the utcomes of quantum-optical experiments." I would like to draw your attention to two previous papers that discuss feasible experiments in which a photon does not seem to behave either as particle or as wave and make some brief considerations on the topic.
The development of quantum technologies depends on investigating of the behavior of quantum systems in noisy environments, since complete isolation from its environment is impossible to achieve. In this paper we show that a wave-particle duality experiment performed in a system with an arbitrarily white noise level cannot be explained in classical terms, using hidden-variables models. In the light of our results, we analyze recent optical and NMR experiments and show that a loophole on non-locality is not fundamental.
Feynman described the double slit experiment as "a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics". The double slit experiment, performed one photon at a time, dramatically demonstrates the particle-wave duality of quantum objects by generating a fringe pattern corresponding to the interference of light (a wave phenomenon) from two slits, even when there is only one photon (a particle) at a time passing through the apparatus. The particle-wave duality of light should also apply to complex three dimension…
We consider how vectorial aspects (polarization) of light propagation can be implemented, and its origin, within a Feynman path integral approach. A key part of this scheme is in generalising the standard optical path length integral from a scalar to a matrix quantity. Reparametrization invariance along the rays allows a covariant formulation where propagation can take place along a general curve. A general gradient index background is used to demonstrate the scheme. This affords a description of classical imaging optics when the polarization aspects may be varying rapidly and cannot be neglec…
In this article, we propose a general principle of quantum interference for quantum system, and based on this we propose a new type of computing machine, the duality computer, that may outperform in principle both classical computer and the quantum computer. According to the general principle of quantum interference, the very essence of quantum interference is the interference of the sub-waves of the quantum system itself. A quantum system considered here can be any quantum system: a single microscopic particle, a composite quantum system such as an atom or a molecule, or a loose collection of…
Although interference is a classical-wave phenomenon, the superposition principle, which underlies interference of individual particles, is at the heart of quantum physics. An interaction-free measurements (IFM) harnesses the wave-particle duality of single photons to sense the presence of an object via the modification of the interference pattern, which can be accomplished even if the photon and the object haven't interacted with each other. By using the quantum Zeno effect, the efficiency of an IFM can be made arbitrarily close to unity. Here we report an on-chip realization of the IFM based…
We establish correspondence between macroscopic thermodynamical quantities and complementarity in wave interference. The well known visibility and predictability in a double slit--like experiment are shown to be connected to magnetic susceptibility and magnetization of a general interacting spin chain. This gives us the ability to analyze the tradeoff between thermodynamical quantities in the same information--theoretic way that is used in analyzing the wave--particle duality. We thus obtain new physical insights into usually complicated thermodynamical models, such as viewing a phase transiti…
A textbook interpretation of quantum physics is that quantum objects can be described in a particle or a wave picture, depending on the operations and measurements performed. Beyond this widely held believe, we demonstrate in this contribution that neither the wave nor the particle description is sufficient to predict the outcomes of quantum-optical experiments. To show this, we derive correlation-based criteria that have to be satisfied when either particles or waves are fed into our interferometer. Using squeezed light, it is then confirmed that measured correlations are incompatible with ei…
The Kapitza - Dirac effect is the diffraction of a well - collimated particle beam by a standing wave of light. Why is this interesting? Comparing this situation to the introductory physics textbook example of diffraction of a laser beam by a grating, the particle beam plays the role of the incoming wave and the standing light wave the role of the material grating, highlighting particle - wave duality. Apart from representing such a beautiful example of particle - wave duality, the diffracted particle beams are coherent. This allows the construction of matter interferometers and explains why t…
The wave-particle duality of light has led to two different encodings for optical quantum information processing. Several approaches have emerged based either on particle-like discrete-variable states, e.g. finite-dimensional quantum systems, or on wave-like continuous-variable states, e.g. infinite-dimensional systems. Here, we demonstrate the first measurement-induced generation of entanglement between optical qubits of these different types, located at distant places and connected by a lossy channel. Such hybrid entanglement, which is a key resource for a variety of recently proposed scheme…
Recently, it was shown that quantum entanglement is an indispensable part of the duality behavior of light. Here, we report a surprisingly intimate connection between the stereographic projection and the duality--entanglement nature of a single photon. We show that, the duality--entanglement relation [Optica \textbf{5}, 942 (2018)], naturally emerges from the stereographic projection geometry. We demonstrate that this geometry is complementarity sensitive; in the sense that, it is sensitive to the particle nature, wave nature, and entanglement nature of a single photon.
The paper scrutinizes both the similarities and the differences between the classical optics and quantum mechanical theories in phase space, especially between the Wigner distribution functions defined in the respective phase spaces. Classical optics is able to provide an understanding of either the corpuscular or wave aspects of quantum mechanics, reflected in phase space through the classical limit of the quantum Wigner distribution function or the Wigner distribution function in classical optics, respectively. However, classical optics, as any classical theory, cannot mimic the wave-particl…
Probing the polarization of gravitational waves (GWs) would provide an evidence of graviton, indicating the quantization of gravity. Motivated by the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, we make an attempt to study the possible helicity coupling of structured lights to GWs. With the analogue between of gravitational fields and the generic electromagnetic media, we present a 4-vector optical Dirac equation based on the Maxwell theory under the paraxial approximation. It is found that twisted lights propagating in a gravitational field can be viewed as a non-Hermitian system with the…
A system of two interacting, physically real, initially homogeneous fields is considered as the simplest basis for the world construction in which one of them, a 'protofield' of electromagnetic nature, is attracted to another protofield, or medium, responsible for the eventually emerging gravitational effects. The interaction process is analysed within the generalised 'effective (optical) potential method' in which we avoid any usual perturbative reduction. It then appears that for generic system parameters the protofields, instead of simply 'falling' one onto another and forming a fixed 'boun…
