Entanglement-enabled delayed choice experiment

Florian Kaiser (1) , Thomas Coudreau (2) , Perola Milman (2) , Daniel Barry Ostrowsky (1) , Sébastien Tanzilli (1)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée
2 MPQ (UMR_7162) - Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques

Wave-particle complementarity is one of the most intriguing features of quan- tum physics. To emphasize this measurement apparatus dependent nature, ex- periments have been performed in which the output beam-splitter of a Mach- Zehnder interferometer is inserted or removed after a photon has already en- tered the device. A recent extension suggested using a 'quantum beam-splitter' at the interferometer's output. We realize this using pairs of polarization en- tangled photons. One photon is tested in the interferometer and is detected, while the other allows determining whether wave, particle, or intermediate be- havior have been observed. Furthermore, this allows continuously morphing the tested photon's behavior from wave like to particle like. This illustrates the inadequacy of a naive wave or particle description of light.

Mots clés: quantum optics

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Florian Kaiser, Thomas Coudreau, Perola Milman, Daniel Barry Ostrowsky, Sébastien Tanzilli. Entanglement-enabled delayed choice experiment. Science, 2012, 338, pp.637-640. ⟨10.1126/science.1226755⟩. ⟨hal-00755263⟩