Two-color photons and nonlocality in fourth-order interference.

Abstract

Angle-separated pair photons emitted in spontaneous parametric fluorescence are superimposed at a beamsplitter and detected by coincidence techniques. The coincidence disappears when the photon path lengths to the beamsplitter are equal to within their inverse bandwidth due to fourth-order interference. The photon bandwidth is set by wide apertures placed to satisfy phase-matching conditions at the nonlinear crystal. The resulting broadband photons are short (39-fs full width at half maximum) and show an oscillatory tail resulting from the hard-edge apertures. Two-color photons are created by blocking the central portion of the apertures leading to strong oscillations of the coincidence rate as a function of path-length difference. Both effects are predicted by the theory of fourth-order interference coupled with the detailed phase-matching conditions in the nonlinear crystal used as a source. The two colors overlap at different positions on the beamsplitter. We show how this could be used as a test of local realistic theories by formulating a Bell inequality based on relative phases between the colors.