Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser with Thermal Light

Files

PhysRevLett.112.180401.pdf (354.16 KB)

Links to Files

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.180401

Permanent Link

http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.180401
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/39966

Collections

UMBC Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering Department
UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Physics Department
UMBC Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5296-240X
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2735-1068

Date

2014-05-05

Type of Work

journal articles
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Peng, Tao, Hui Chen, Yanhua Shih, and Marlan O. Scully. “Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser with Thermal Light.” Physical Review Letters 112, no. 18 (2014): 180401. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.180401.

Rights

©2014 American Physical Society

Subjects

UMBC Quantum Optics Laboratory

Abstract

We report a random delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment. In a Young’s double-slit interferometer, the which-slit information is learned from the photon-number fluctuation correlation of thermal light. The reappeared interference indicates that the which-slit information of a photon, or wave packet, can be “erased” by a second photon or wave packet, even after the annihilation of the first. Different from an entangled photon pair, the jointly measured two photons, or wave packets, are just two randomly distributed and randomly created photons of a thermal source that fall into the coincidence time window. The experimental observation can be explained as a nonlocal interference phenomenon in which a random photon or wave packet pair, interferes with the pair itself at distance.