Multi-Photon Interference

19 December 2023

Title: Multi-Photon Interference

Speaker: Dr. Daniel Bhatti, Institute for Functional Matter and Quantum Technologies, University of Stuttgart

Abstract of Talk: In this seminar we show that multi-photon interference is a useful tool in quantum optics to describe, understand, and generate different quantum effects.

In the first part, we discuss Dicke superradiance and Dicke subradiance, spatial interference phenomena which usually require quantum emitters to be prepared in entangled Dicke states. We show that these phenomena can also be produced with initially uncorrelated quantum and even classical light sources, when using a general Hanbury Brown and Twiss setup. We find that in both cases this can be understood from identical multi-photon interference.

In the second part we then see that multi-photon interference can also be utilized to generate specific multi-photon entangled states. By using symmetric multiport splitters and post-selecting onto certain photon-number distributions, we show that N-photon N-mode Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states can be generated starting from N independent photons.