Color Erasure Detectors Enable Chromatic Interferometry

Luo-Yuan Qu; Jordan Cotler; Fei Ma; Jian-Yu Guan; Ming-Yang Zheng; Xiuping Xie; Yu-Ao Chen; Qiang Zhang; Frank Wilczek; Jian-Wei Pan

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.243601

Color Erasure Detectors Enable Chromatic Interferometry

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Dec 13;123(24):243601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.243601.

Authors

Luo-Yuan Qu^{1

2

3}, Jordan Cotler⁴, Fei Ma^{1

2

3}, Jian-Yu Guan^{1

2}, Ming-Yang Zheng³, Xiuping Xie³, Yu-Ao Chen^{1

2}, Qiang Zhang^{1

2

3}, Frank Wilczek^{5

6

7

8

9}, Jian-Wei Pan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Branch, National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Modern Physics University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai 201315, People's Republic of China.
² CAS Center for Excellence and Synergetic Innovation Center in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, Shanghai Branch, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai 201315, People's Republic of China.
³ Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology, Jinan 250101, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
⁵ Center for Theoretical Physics, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
⁶ T. D. Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, People's Republic of China.
⁷ Wilczek Quantum Center, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, People's Republic of China.
⁸ Department of Physics, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91 Sweden.
⁹ Department of Physics and Origins Project, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 25287, USA.

PMID: 31922826
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.243601

Abstract

By engineering and manipulating quantum entanglement between incoming photons and experimental apparatus, we construct single-photon detectors which cannot distinguish between photons of very different wavelengths. These color-erasure detectors enable a new kind of intensity interferometry, with potential applications in microscopy and astronomy. We demonstrate chromatic interferometry experimentally, observing robust interference using both coherent and incoherent photon sources.