Quantum diffraction and interference of spatially correlated photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion

Abstract

We demonstrate one- and two-photon diffraction and interference experiments utilizing parametric down-converted photon pairs (biphotons) and a transmission grating. With two-photon detection, the biphoton exhibits a diffraction-interference pattern equivalent to that of an effective single particle that is associated with half the wavelength of the constituent photons. With one-photon detection, however no diffraction-interference pattern is observed. We show that these phenomena originate from the spatial quantum correlation between the down-converted photons.