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Two-photon Interference Between Independent Sources

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Lifeng Duana , Aojie Xua , Yun Zhanga,∗
a Department of Engineering Science, The University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1 Chofugaoka, Chofu-shi,
Tokyo, 182-8585, Japan

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Abstract

We demonstrate two-photon nonclassical interference between a weak coherent state source and

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another source, which emits a phase-randomized weak coherent state, a single-photon state, or
a thermal state. Both spectral asymmetry and average photon number ratio in a given time
interval are considered in our model. The second correlation coefficient between two output of

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beam splitter is numerally calculated with spectral ratio and average photon number ratio. We
obtained the optimum parameters allowing us to observe the high-visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel
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interference. The results may throw some new light on the two-photon interference experiment
with independent sources.
Keywords: two-photon interference, second-order correlation coefficient,
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spectral asymmetry, average photon number

1. Introduction

Interference between two single photon wavepackets at a beam splitter (BS) is one of critical
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effects in quantum optics. Coincidence events between the two single-photon counting detectors,
which are placed in the two output ports of BS, are investigated. From the view of quantum
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mechanics, there has no coincidence counts when two identical single photons are feeding the
BS. The two-photon interference between two indistinguishable single photons was first observed
employing photon pairs generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC),
named Hong-Ou- Mandel (HOM) dip [1]. A variety interference between two-photon states have
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been attracted considerable attention because of its involvement of fundamental quantum physics
and potential applications in quantum information [2, 3]. The HOM dip can be understood as the
destructive interference in quantum mechanic between the two probability amplitudes for single
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∗ Correspondingauthor
Email address: zhang@ee.uec.ac.jp (Yun Zhang)
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Preprint submitted to Optics Communications October 27, 2022

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photons emerging in each of the two outputs. It can also be understood as the entanglement
between two output fields, hence the interference visibility becomes V = 1 − g 2 (0), where g 2 (0)

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is the normalized second-order correlation coefficient of two output fields when there has no time
delay.
In a quantum networking application, it becomes necessary to connect distant quantum de-
vices on quantum nodes, such as quantum relays and repeaters [4, 5, 6]. A local quantum oper-

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ation, such as the measurement of two-photon interference measurement, can combine different
pairs of entangled quantum bits. This operation allows qubits never physically meet to become

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entangled. From the viewpoint of quantum networking applications, optimizing the two-photon
interference between independent sources is the core technology. Until now, this operation has
been performed using various kinds of single sources, such as nonlinear crystals [7, 8], quantum
dots [9], single atoms [10], or trapped ions [11, 12]. Especially, the operation turned to observe

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two-photon inference between a heralded single photon and a weak coherent source since the
system is simple [13, 14, 15]. Recently, it was demonstrated that two-photon interference effects
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can be observed even between two weak coherent states. The HOM dip is observed by the ex-
istence of multi-photon wavepackets governing by Poisson statistics and interference visibility of
V is limited to 50% for two spatial modes [16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. A HOM dip with visibil-
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ity of near 100% can be improved when only the coincidence events from two single photons is
postselected [23]. This technique was also employed to demonstrate the violating Bell inequality
using two weak coherent states [24].
In a two-photon interference between heralded single-photon and weak coherent state, it
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is noticed that the spectral purity of heralded single-photon source plays an essential role in
measureing interference visibility [25, 26]. Usually, photon pairs from the SPDC process have
a strong frequency correlation and each photon has a broad bandwidth, which is determined
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by the phase-matching condition of the crystal. Therefore, it is very important to obtain pure
photon pairs for heralding single-photon state in two-photon interference. The purity of photon
pairs is used to characterize the spectral correlation or frequency correlation of a photon pair.
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The higher the purity, the lower the correlation in frequency. In recent years, improving the
purity of heralded single-photon sources is extensively studied in for the realization of on-chip
photon-pair sources [27]. In principle, the visibility of two-photon interference strongly relies on
the indistinguishability of both spectral and temporal modes. Furthermore, the producing rate
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in a given time interval is also an important parameter when the multi-photon event has to be
considered in experiment. Hence, a theoretical model with these parameters becomes important
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WCS: SPCM

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C.C.
WCS/TS/SPS: SPCM

(a) (b)

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澳

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Figure 1: HOM interference with different independent sources. (WCS: Weak coherent state; TS: Thermal state;
SPS: Single-photon state; δωk (k = A, B): spectral width of the source k; µk (k = A, B): average photon number
of source k) (a) Photons with single mode. (b) Photons with spatiotemporal modes

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for understanding the experiment results. Here, according to the studies of Yuan et al. [28]
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and Navarrete et al. [29], we show that two-photon nonclassical interference between a weak
coherent state source and another source, which emits a phase-randomized weak coherent state,
a single-photon state or a thermal state. A theoretical model with both spectral asymmetry
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and average photon number ratio in a time interval was derived. We obtained the optimum
parameters allowing us to observe the high-visibility HOM interference. The results may throw
some new light on the two-photon interference experiment with independent sources.

2. Theoretical model
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The set-up for our HOM interference measurement consists of two independent input light
sources, in which one is a weak coherent state with a varying average photon number, interfering
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at a BS with another light source with a fixed average photon number. The other source emits a
phase-randomized weak coherent state, a thermal state, or a single-photon state. In experiment,
the thermal state can be produced by one of the photon pairs from SPDC and the heralded
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single-photon state can be also generated with quantum-correlated photon pairs. Two-photon
interference pattern can be obtained by the measurement of coincidence counts at the outputs
of BS as shown in Fig. 1.
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2.1. Photons with single mode

The coherent state in single mode is expanded in photon number state representation, which

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can be represented as,
 |α|2  X αn
|α⟩A = exp − √ |n⟩, (1)
2 n n!
in which |α|2 = µ is the average photon number in a given time interval. The n photons

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probability in that time interval follows a Poisson distribution as Pn|µ = µn exp(−µ)/n!. On
the other hand, the photon number distribution of a single mode thermal state is called the
Bose-Einstein distribution Pn|µ = µn /(1 + µ)n+1 and depends on the average photon number

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of µ. Meanwhile, the probability of measuring one photon is µ for a single-photon state with
producing rate of µ(µ ≤ 1) in the given time interval. Hence, when two sources with small
average photon number values of µA , µB are injected into a BS, the probability of finding a pair

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of photon number states |m, n⟩AB at input modes is written as

µm n
A µB exp(−µA − µB )
P (m, n)coherent = , (for two coherent states) (2a)

P (m, n)thermal = A B
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m!n!
µm µn exp(−µA )
, (for coherent state and thermal state) (2b)
(1 + µB )n+1 m!
µm µB exp(−µA )
P (m, 1)singlephoton = A
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. (for coherent state and single state) (2c)
m!

For clarity of presentation, both the dark counts and quantum efficiency of detectors are not
considered. The measured coincidence (C) probability at the two outputs is given by

C = P (1, 1|1, 1) + P (1, 1|2, 0) + P (1, 1|0, 2) + O(m + n > 2), (3)
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where, P (1, 1|m, n) is the coincidence probability conditioned on the existence of m and n photons
in input ports, and O is a positive quantity associated with higher-order photon terms. Note
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that for a coherent state with an average photon number value smaller than 0.22 photons per
time interval, the probability for a higher-order photon number (more than 2) is less than 4%.
We will keep this restriction in our model. The term of P (1, 1|1, 1) on the right side of the Eq.(3)
represents HOM effect and has a value of zero when two indistinguishable photons are inputted.
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Nevertheless, the P (1, 1|1, 1) is 0.5 when two distinguishable photons are inputted. The other
two terms P (1, 1|2, 0) and P (1, 1|0, 2) of the right side represent a two-photon in one port and
an empty in the other port. Their value are always equal to 0.5. The visibility of the two-photon
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interference can be defined as

Cindistinguishable photons
V =1− . (4)
Cdistinguishable photons
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By multiplying Eq. (2a) and Eq. (3), we obtain the probability for measured coincidence at
two outputs of BS

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µA ,µB µ2A µ2
Cc−c ∝ µA µB P (1, 1|1, 1) + P (1, 1|2, 0) + B P (1, 1|0, 2), (5)
2 2
when two weak coherent states with average photon number of µA and µB are inputted. It is
easy to get V = 2µA µB /(µA + µB )2 . Hence, the maximum two-photon interference visibility

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occurs at µA = µB . In that case, the probability of P (1, 1|1, 1) has the same coefficient with
the sum of P (1, 1|2, 0) and P (1, 1|0, 2). It indicates a HOM interference visibility of 0.5 will be
obtained when the high-order terms are ignored.

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For interference of coherent state and thermal state, the probability for a measured coinci-
dence is written as

µA ,µB µA µB µ2 µ2B
Cc−t ∝ P (1, 1|1, 1) + A P (1, 1|2, 0) + P (1, 1|0, 2). (6)

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(1 + µB )2 2 (1 + µB )3
The visibility of V ≈ 2µA µB /[(µA + µB )2 + µ2B ] is obtained when high-order terms of µA and
√
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µB are ignored. For the case of µA = 2µB , a HOM interference visibility of around 0.4 can
be obtained since the Bose-Einstein distribution has almost the similar values to the Poisson
distribution at a smaller average photon number.
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The measured coincidence probability for the interference of coherent state and single-photon
state is given by,
µA ,µB µ2A
Cc−s ∝ µA µB P (1, 1|1, 1) + P (1, 1|2, 0). (7)
2
Note that the contribution from two-photon state of coherent state is not relative to the single
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state and a HOM interference visibility of 2µB /(µA + 2µB ) can be obtained. It indicates that a
visibility of more than 0.5 always occurs when µA < 2µB . This is different from the interference
results between two coherent states and between a coherent state and a thermal state. For the
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case of a perfect single-photon state (µB = 1), the interference visibility becomes 2/(µA + 2) and
reaches near 1 when µA ≪ 1.

2.2. Photons with spatiotemporal modes

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To obtain deeper understanding, let us consider a description of the photons with spatiotem-
poral wave packets. For a 50:50 optical BS with spatial modes marked in Fig.1 (b), the electric
field operators can be attributed to its input as,
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+
ÊA −
(t) = ξA (t)âA , ÊA ∗
(t) = ξA (t)â†A (8a)
+
ÊB −
(t) = ξB (t)âB , ÊB ∗
(t) = ξB (t)â†B (8b)
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where ξA (t) and ξB (t) composed of an amplitude envelope and a phase, are wave functions in a
time domain and the spatial position has been taken as a subscript. Then, the output electric

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field of the BS can be obtained by the operators

+ 1 + + 1  
ÊC (t) = √ (ÊA (t) + ÊB (t)) = √ ξA (t)âA + ξB (t)âB , (9a)
2 2
+ 1 + + 1  
ÊD (t) = √ (ÊA (t) − ÊB (t)) = √ ξA (t)âA − ξB (t)âB . (9b)

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2 2
To obtain the probability of coincident detections for fields C and D at time t and a given time
± ±
delay τ , the field operators can be given like ÊC (t) and ÊD (t + τ ). With an input state of |ψin ⟩,

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the coincidence probability can be computed with

− − + +
P (t, τ ) ∝ ⟨ψin |ÊD (t + τ )ÊC (t)ÊC (t)ÊD (t + τ )|ψin ⟩. (10)

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Since the analysis is restricted up to two photons, the possible input states of two photons are
|ψin ⟩ = |1, 1⟩A,B = â†A â†B |0, 0⟩A,B , |2, 0⟩A,B = â†A â†A )|0, 0⟩A,B , or |0, 2⟩A,B = â†B â†B |0, 0⟩A,B , and
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the coincident probabilities become

P 1,1 (t, τ ) ∝ |ξA (t)ξB (t + τ ) − ξA (t + τ )ξB (t)|2 (11a)

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P 2,0 (t, τ ) ∝ |ξA (t)ξA (t + τ )|2 , (11b)

P 0,2 (t, τ ) ∝ |ξB (t + τ )ξB (t)|2 , (11c)

respectively. In a real experiment, we measure the two-photon coincident events with some finite
time resolution and the measurement occurs in a finite time window. Hence, the coincidence
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probability recorded in the experiment will be

Z Z
m,n
Pc (τ ) ∝ dt1 dt2 P m,n (t1 , t2 , τ ), (12)
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T τR

where, T is the total measurement time and τR is the coincidence window. When we consider
two sources with an average photon of µA and µB in a time interval, it becomes
Z Z
m,n
dt2 P m,n (t1 , t2 , τ ).
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N c (τ ) ∝ P (m, n|µA , µB ) dt1 (13)

T τR

The normalized second-order correlation coefficient can be obtained using

N c1,1 (τ ) + N c2,0 (τ ) + N c0,2 (τ )

gCD (τ ) = . (14)
N c1,1 (∞) + N c2,0 (∞) + N c0,2 (∞)
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It gives a two-photon interference behavior depending on the temporal property and average
photon number between two independent light sources.
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3. Interference between different sources

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A standard way to address the issue of spatiotemporal modes is based on the Fourier trans-
formation, i.e., the decomposition of temporal wave packets into an infinite number of single-
frequency field modes [30, 31, 32]. For the input states, they are represented as a superposition
of all possible frequency modes occupied by a quantum excitation,
ZZ

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|1, 1⟩A,B = dω1 dω2 ϕA (ω1 )ϕB (ω2 )â†A (ω1 )â†B (ω2 )|0, 0⟩A,B , (15a)
Z
|2, 0⟩A,B = dω1 ϕ2A (ω1 )(â†A (ω1 ))2 |0, 0⟩A,B , (15b)

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Z
|0, 2⟩A,B = dω2 ϕ2B (ω2 )(â†B (ω2 ))2 |0, 0⟩A,B , (15c)

where the spectral amplitude function of the state ϕk (ω) is assumed to be normalized so that
dωϕ∗ (ω)ϕ(ω) = 1. The spectral amplitude function ϕk (ω) and the wave function in the time
R

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domain ξk (t) have relationship of
Z
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ξk (t) = √ dωϕk (ω)e−iωt . (16)
2π
3.1. Two weak coherent states
Consider two coherent states with Gaussian spectral amplitude function
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1  (ω − ω̄ )2 
k
ϕk (ω) = √ √ exp − , (k = A, B) (17)
4
π δωk 2δωk2
where ω̄k is the central frequency of the field, δωk defines its spectral width, and the normalization
is taken. From Eq. (16), the temporal wave function is
√
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δωk  δω 2 t2 
ξk (t) = √4 exp − k exp(−iω̄k t). (k = A, B) (18)
π 2
We now use (11) and (12) to calculate the coincident probability. The integration can be evalu-
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ated using software of Mathematica. The coincidence probability simplifies to,

1 δωA δωB δω 2 δω 2
P c1,1 (τ ) = − 2 2 exp(− 2 A B 2 τ 2 ), (19a)
2 δωA + δωB δωA + δωB
1
P c2,0 (τ ) = P c0,2 (τ ) = , (19b)
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2
where the two coherent states with the same central frequency (ω̄A = ω̄B ) have been taken. When
ω̄A ̸= ω̄B , a quantum beat signal with carrier frequency of ∆ = |ω̄A − ω̄B | in the interference
will appear. In the following, only the case of the same central frequency is considered. Using
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(2) and (19), we obtain the second-order correlation coefficient between beam C and D as,
2 2
4µA µB δωA δωB δωA δωB 2
gCD (τ ) = 1 − 2 + δω 2 exp(− 2 + δω 2 τ ). (20)
(µA + µB )2 δωA B δωA B
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If the Gaussians and average photon number are equal, that is ϕA (ω) = ϕB (ω) and µA = µB ,
we have,

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1 δω 2
gCD (τ ) = 1 − exp(− A τ 2 ). (21)
2 2
It indicates that maximum two-photon interference visibility of 0.5 occurs when two coherent
states have the same spectral width and the same average photon number. And the HOM dip
width only depends on the spectral width of the coherent state.

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3.2. Weak coherent state and thermal state

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Usually, the spectral amplitude of a thermal state is Lorentzian distribution at a center
frequency of ω̄B and a spectral width of δωB ,

1 δωB
ϕB (ω) = √ . (22)
2π (ω − ω̄B )2 + ( 12 δωB )2

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It interferes with a weak coherent state with a Gaussian spectral distribution. Their amplitude

√
δωA
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function in time domain can be obtained by Fourier transformation of spectral amplitudes,
 δω 2 t2 
ξA (t) = √4 exp − A exp(−iω̄A t), (23a)
π 2
 δω |t| 
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B
p
ξB (t) = δωB exp − exp(−iω̄B t). (23b)
2

We calculate and simplify the coincident probability using the above-mentioned method as
√
1,1 1 πδω2  δω h
2
 δω
2 δω1 τ 
P c (τ ) = − exp exp(δω2 τ )erfc √ + √
2 4δω1 δω1 2δω1 2
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 δω
2 δω1 τ i2
+ exp(−δω2 τ )erfc √ − √ , (24a)
2δω1 2
1 1
P c2,0 (τ ) = , P c0,2 (τ ) = . (24b)
2 2
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And this leads to the second-order correlation coefficient between beams C and D,

4µA µB  δω h
2
 δω
2 δω1 τ 
gCD (τ ) = 1 − exp exp(δω 2 τ )erfc √ + √
(µA + µB )2 + µ2B δω1 2δω1 2
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 δω
2 δω1 τ i2
+ exp(−δω2 τ )erfc √ − √ . (25)
2δω1 2

3.3. Single-photon state and weak coherent state

Now we consider two-photon interference between a single-photon state and a weak coherent
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state. Assuming that they have Gaussian distributions, the calculated coincident probabilities
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Figure 2: (a) Second-order correlation coefficient for two weak coherent states two-photon interference as a
function of detection-time delay τ and (b) g 2 (0) as a function of average photon number ratio of µA to µB .

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are as the same as Eq. (19). We obtained the normalized second-order correlation coefficient
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between beam C and D by Eq. (3c) and (19),

4µB δωA δωB δω 2 δω 2

gCD (τ ) = 1 − 2 2 exp(− 2 A B 2 τ 2 ), (26)
µA + 2µB δωA + δωB δωA + δωB
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If the Gaussians are equal, that is ϕA (ω) = ϕB (ω), we simplify,

2 δω 2
gCD (τ ) = 1 − exp(− A τ 2 ), (27)
2 + µA 2

when a perfect single photon (µB = 1) is employed in interference. This indicates that a visibility
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of more than 0.5 can be obtained when µA < 2 at τ = 0 and the two-photon state in the coherent
state leads to the decrease in visibility. The spectral width determines the width of HOM dip.
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4. Numerical results

To make a more deep understanding of our model, we give a numerical calculation based on
real experimental parameters. Here pulse trains with a time duration of ps or fs at a central
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λ0 δω
wavelength of 800 nm are considered. In this case, the linewidth δλ(δλ = 2πc , where c is the
speed of light and λ0 is the central wavelength) with a value range of several nm can be realized
by optical interference filter. Figure 2 gives the interference results between two weak coherent
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states. The second-order correlation coefficient (g 2 (τ )) is plotted in Fig. 2 (a) as a function of

detection-time delay τ for different linewidth when the two weak coherent states have the same
average photon number. The g 2 (0) as a function of the average photon number ratio of µA to µB
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Figure 3: (a) Second-order correlation coefficient between a weak coherent state and a thermal state as a function

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of detection-time delay τ and (b) g 2 (0) as a function of the average photon number ratio of µA to µB .

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is shown in Fig. 2 (b). These results indicate that the best interference visibility of 0.5 occurs
under the condition of two weak coherent states with the same average photon number and the
same spectral width. The absolute spectral width of the light source have not an influence on
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the interference visibility. The broadening of line width for coherent states leads to a two-photon
interference dip with a narrower width. It is worth to mention that either spectral or power
asymmetry will degrade the two-photon interference visibility.
Figures 3 (a) and (b) show the situations of two-photon interference between a weak coherent
state and a thermal state. In an experiment, it can be realized by interfering a laser light and
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one beam of type II SPDC [33]. The result is similar to the two-photon interference between two
weak coherent states. However, the best interference visibility of near 0.4 occurs at the average
√
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photon number ratio (µA /µB ) of 2 when the coherent state and thermal state have the same
spectral width. The Bose-Einstein distribution of photon number leads to the difference from the
interference of two coherent states. It can be understood from Eq. (6) and (25). The Lorentzian
distribution of spectrum does not react to the two-photon interference.
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Figures 4 give the interference results between a weak coherent state and a single-photon state.
Clearly, the best two-photon interference with visibility of near 1 occurs under the condition of
µA ≪ µB and with the same spectral width. To obtain a good interference, the employing weak
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coherent state should have the same spectral width as the single-photon state and the intensity
of the coherent state also keeps as small as possible. It also indicates that the interference
visibility reaches to under 0.5 when the average photon number of a weak coherent state is
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Figure 4: (a) Second-order correlation coefficient between a weak coherent state and a single-photon state as a
function of detection-time delay τ and (b) g 2 (0) as a function of the average photon number ratio of µA to µB .

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twice of producing rate of a single-photon state (black curve in Fig. 4 (b)) even though they
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have the same spectral width. Two-photon state from the coherent state is one of the barriers
to improving two-photon interference visibility. Hence, improvement of producing rate of a
single-photon state is the key technique in a real experiment. Another developed experimental
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technique is also possible to extract the two-photon probability [23, 24].

5. Conclusion

In summary, we demonstrate two-photon interference between two independent sources. Both

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analytical and numerical results are given between a weak coherent state source and a phase-
randomized weak coherent state, a single-photon state, or a thermal state when the spectral
asymmetry and average photon number ratio in a time interval are considered. The optimum
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parameters in an experiment are able to choose for observing the high-visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel
interference with independent sources.
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CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lifeng Duan: Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Visualization, Investigation, Methodol-

ogy, Writing – review editing. Aojie Xu: Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Review
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editing. Yun Zhang: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Fund-

ing acquisition, Supervision, Writing – original draft, review editing. All authors reviewed and
approved the final report.
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Declaration of competing interest

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The authors declare that they have no known competing for financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding

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This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant No. 21K04919, 21K04923).

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