Single-photon Sagnac interferometer

Guillaume Bertocchi (1) , Olivier Alibart (1) , Daniel Barry Ostrowsky (1) , Sébastien Tanzilli (1) , Pascal Baldi (1)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée

We present the first experimental demonstration of the optical Sagnac effect at the single-photon level. Using a high quality guided-wave heralded single- photon source at 1550 nm and a fibre optics setup, we obtain an interference pattern with net visibilities up to (99.2 ± 0.4%). On the basis of this high visibility and the compactness of the setup, the interest of such a system for fibre optics gyroscope is discussed.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Guillaume Bertocchi, Olivier Alibart, Daniel Barry Ostrowsky, Sébastien Tanzilli, Pascal Baldi. Single-photon Sagnac interferometer. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2006, 39, pp.1011-1016. ⟨10.1088/0953-4075/39/5/001⟩. ⟨hal-00922744⟩