Monotonic quantum-to-classical transition enabled by positively correlated biphotons
Phys. Rev. A 95, 062341 – Published 29 June, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.95.062341
Abstract
Multiparticle interference is a fundamental phenomenon in the study of quantum mechanics. It was discovered in a recent experiment [Y.-S. Ra et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, 1227 (2013)] that spectrally uncorrelated biphotons exhibited a nonmonotonic quantum-to-classical transition in a four-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference. In this work, we consider the same scheme with spectrally correlated photons. By theoretical calculation and numerical simulation, we found the transition not only can be nonmonotonic with negatively correlated or uncorrelated biphotons, but also can be monotonic with positively correlated biphotons. The fundamental reason for this difference is that the HOM-type multiphoton interference is a differential-frequency interference. Our study may shed new light on understanding the role of frequency entanglement in multiphoton behavior.