Department of Physics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland 21250, USA.
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA and Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA and Baylor University, Waco, Texas 76706, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2014 May 9;112(18):180401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.180401. Epub 2014 May 5.
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.
我们报告了一个随机延迟选择量子擦除实验。在杨氏双缝干涉仪中,通过热光的光子数波动相关信息可以获知光子通过哪一个狭缝。重新出现的干涉表明,即使在第一个光子或波包湮灭后,第二个光子或波包仍可以“擦除”一个光子或波包的通过狭缝的信息。与纠缠光子对不同,联合测量的两个光子或波包只是随机分布和随机产生的来自热光源的光子,它们落入了符合时间窗口。实验观察可以解释为一种非局域干涉现象,即随机的光子或波包对在距离上与自身干涉。