Twiss Intensity Research Articles

Entanglement enabled intensity interferometry in ultrarelativistic ultraperipheral nuclear collisions

An important tool in studying the subfemtoscale spacetime structure of matter in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions is Hanbury Brown–Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry of identical particles in the final state of the collisions. We propose that a variant of the entanglement enabled intensity interferometry (E2I2) framework introduced by Cotler and Wilczek can provide a powerful alternative to HBT interferometry in extracting fundamental nonperturbative features of quantum chromodynamics at high energies. We apply this framework to demonstrate that the spatial distributions of color singlet (pomeron) configurations in nuclei are sensitive to measurements of exclusive resonant decays of ρ mesons into π± pairs in ultrarelativistic ultraperipheral nuclear collisions (UPCs) at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider. A preliminary analysis suggests that the model-independent extraction of pomeron distributions will require careful treatment of the interplay of E2I2 in the vector meson exclusive decay with the incoherent cross section for exclusive vector meson production. The E2I2 framework developed here is quite general. It can also be employed as a tool to extract information on the spin structure of pomeron couplings as well as enhance the discovery potential for rare odderon configurations from exclusive vector meson decays into few-particle final states both in UPCs and at the Electron-Ion Collider. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

Two-photon amplitude interferometry for precision astrometry

Improved quantum sensing of photons from astronomical objects could provide high resolution observations in the optical benefiting numerous fields, including general relativity, dark matter studies, and cosmology. It has been recently proposed that stations in optical interferometers would not require a phase-stable optical link if instead sources of quantum-mechanically entangled pairs could be provided to them, potentially enabling hitherto prohibitively long baselines. A new refinement of this idea is developed, in which two photons from different sources are interfered at two separate and decoupled stations, requiring only a slow classical information link between them. We rigorously calculate the observables and contrast this new interferometric technique with the Hanbury Brown & Twiss intensity interferometry. We argue this technique could allow robust high-precision measurements of the relative astrometry of the two sources. A basic calculation suggests that angular precision on the order of $10$~microarcsecond in the relative opening angle could be achieved in a single night's observation of two bright stars.

I3T: Intensity Interferometry Imaging Telescope

ABSTRACT We propose a new approach, based on the Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity interferometry, to transform a Cherenkov telescope to its equivalent optical telescope. We show that, based on the use of photonics components borrowed from quantum-optical applications, we can recover spatial details of the observed source down to the diffraction limit of the Cherenkov telescope, set by its diameter at the mean wavelength of observation. For this, we propose to apply aperture synthesis techniques from pairwise and triple correlation of sub-pupil intensities, in order to reconstruct the image of a celestial source from its Fourier moduli and phase information, despite atmospheric turbulence. We examine the sensitivity of the method, i.e. limiting magnitude, and its implementation on existing or future high energy arrays of Cherenkov telescopes. We show that despite its poor optical quality compared to extremely large optical telescopes under construction, a Cherenkov telescope can provide diffraction limited imaging of celestial sources, in particular at the visible, down to violet wavelengths.

Ultra-fast Stokes parameter correlations of true unpolarized thermal light: type-I unpolarized light.

We measure Stokes parameter correlations in analogy to the intensity correlation measurements in the original Hanbury-Brown & Twiss configuration by realizing an experimental setup by combining a Schaefer-Collett or Berry-Gabrielse-Livingston polarimeter with a Hanbury-Brown & Twiss intensity interferometer. We investigate true unpolarized light emitted from a broadband thermal light source, which we realize by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, thus being an ideal source of true unpolarized light. We find that all Stokes parameter correlations ⟨SnSn⟩, n∈{1,2,3} are equal to 0.5⟨I⟩2. The proven invariance of the Stokes parameter correlations against retardation by wave-plates clearly shows for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that our true unpolarized thermal light represents type I unpolarized light in accordance with a theoretical prediction for a classification of unpolarized light postulated more than 20 years ago.

Polarization of Λ (Λ[over ¯]) Hyperons along the Beam Direction in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV.

The Λ (Λ[over ¯]) hyperon polarization along the beam direction has been measured in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200 GeV, for the first time in heavy-ion collisions. The polarization dependence on the hyperons' emission angle relative to the elliptic flow plane exhibits a second harmonic sine modulation, indicating a quadrupole pattern of the vorticity component along the beam direction, expected due to elliptic flow. The polarization is found to increase in more peripheral collisions, and shows no strong transverse momentum (p_{T}) dependence at p_{T} greater than 1 GeV/c. The magnitude of the signal is about 5 times smaller than those predicted by hydrodynamic and multiphase transport models; the observed phase of the emission angle dependence is also opposite to these model predictions. In contrast, the kinematic vorticity calculations in the blast-wave model tuned to reproduce particle spectra, elliptic flow, and the azimuthal dependence of the Gaussian source radii measured with the Hanbury Brown-Twiss intensity interferometry technique reproduce well the modulation phase measured in the data and capture the centrality and transverse momentum dependence of the polarization signal.

Bright UV Single Photon Emission at Point Defects in h-BN.

To date, quantum sources in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral region have been obtained only in semiconductor quantum dots. Color centers in wide bandgap materials may represent a more effective alternative. However, the quest for UV quantum emitters in bulk crystals faces the difficulty of combining an efficient UV excitation/detection optical setup with the capability of addressing individual color centers in potentially highly defective materials. In this work we overcome this limit by employing an original experimental setup coupling cathodoluminescence within a scanning transmission electron microscope to a Hanbury-Brown-Twiss intensity interferometer. We identify a new extremely bright UV single photon emitter (4.1 eV) in hexagonal boron nitride. Hyperspectral cathodoluminescence maps show a high spatial localization of the emission (∼80 nm) and a typical zero-phonon line plus phonon replica spectroscopic signature, indicating a point defect origin, most likely carbon substitutional at nitrogen sites. An additional nonsingle-photon broad emission may appear in the same spectral region, which can be attributed to intrinsic defects related to electron irradiation.

Improving the signal-to-noise ratio of thermal ghost imaging based on positive–negative intensity correlation

Ghost imaging with thermal light is a topic in optical imaging that has aroused great interest in recent years. However, the imaging quality must be greatly improved before the technology can be transferred from the lab to engineering applications. By means of correspondence ghost imaging (CGI) with a pseudo-thermal light source and appropriate sorting of the intensity fluctuations of the signal and reference beams, we obtain the positive and negative Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity correlation characteristics of the optical field. Then, for ghost imaging of a transmissive binary object, we find that by subtracting the negative from the positive fluctuation frames of the presorted reference detector signals, the signal-to-noise ratio can be effectively increased, with almost all the background noise eliminated. Our results show that, compared with the generic CGI technique, the signal-to-noise ratio can be increased by nearly 60%.

Measurement of interaction between antiprotons.

One of the primary goals of nuclear physics is to understand the force between nucleons, which is a necessary step for understanding the structure of nuclei and how nuclei interact with each other. Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus in 1911, and the large body of knowledge about the nuclear force that has since been acquired was derived from studies made on nucleons or nuclei. Although antinuclei up to antihelium-4 have been discovered and their masses measured, little is known directly about the nuclear force between antinucleons. Here, we study antiproton pair correlations among data collected by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), where gold ions are collided with a centre-of-mass energy of 200 gigaelectronvolts per nucleon pair. Antiprotons are abundantly produced in such collisions, thus making it feasible to study details of the antiproton-antiproton interaction. By applying a technique similar to Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity interferometry, we show that the force between two antiprotons is attractive. In addition, we report two key parameters that characterize the corresponding strong interaction: the scattering length and the effective range of the interaction. Our measured parameters are consistent within errors with the corresponding values for proton-proton interactions. Our results provide direct information on the interaction between two antiprotons, one of the simplest systems of antinucleons, and so are fundamental to understanding the structure of more-complex antinuclei and their properties.

Correlation femtoscopy of small systems

The basic principles of the correlation femtoscopy, including its correspondence to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity interferometry, are reexamined. The main subject of the paper is an analysis of the correlation femtoscopy when the source size is as small as the order of the uncertainty limit. It is about 1 fm for the current high energy experiments. Then the standard femtoscopy model of random sources is inapplicable. The uncertainty principle leads to the partial indistinguishability and coherence of closely located emitters that affect the observed femtoscopy scales. In thermal systems the role of corresponding coherent length is taken by the thermal de Broglie wavelength that also defines the size of a single emitter. The formalism of partially coherent phases in the amplitudes of closely located individual emitters is used for the quantitative analysis. The general approach is illustrated analytically for the case of the Gaussian approximation for emitting sources. A reduction of the interferometry radii and a suppression of the Bose-Einstein correlation functions for small sources due to the uncertainty principle are found. There is a positive correlation between the source size and the intercept of the correlation function. The peculiarities of the nonfemtoscopic correlations caused by minijets and fluctuations of the initial states of the systems formed in $pp$ and ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ collisions are also analyzed. The factorization property for the contributions of femtoscopic and nonfemtoscopic correlations into complete correlation function is observed in numerical calculations in a wide range of the model parameters.

Spatially resolved quantum nano-optics of single photons using an electron microscope.

We report on the experimental demonstration of single-photon state generation and characterization in an electron microscope. In this aim we have used low intensity relativistic (energy between 60 and 100keV) electrons beams focused in a ca. 1nm probe to excite diamond nanoparticles. This triggered individual neutral nitrogen-vacancy centers to emit photons which could be gathered and sent to a Hanbury Brown-Twiss intensity interferometer. The detection of a dip in the correlation function at small time delays clearly demonstrates antibunching and thus the creation of nonclassical light states. Specifically, we have also demonstrated single-photon states detection. We unveil the mechanism behind quantum states generation in an electron microscope, and show that it clearly makes cathodoluminescence the nanometer scale analog of photoluminescence. By using an extremely small electron probe size and the ability to monitor its position with subnanometer resolution, we also show the possibility of measuring the quantum character of the emitted beam with deep subwavelength resolution.

Yoctosecond Metrology Through Hanbury Brown–Twiss Correlations from a Quark-Gluon Plasma

Expansion dynamics at the yoctosecond time scale affect the evolution of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy ion collisions. We show how these dynamics are accessible through Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry of direct photons emitted from the interior of the QGP. A detector placed close to the beam axis is particularly sensitive to early polar momentum anisotropies of the QGP. Observing a modification of the HBT signal at the proposed FoCal detector of the LHC ALICE experiment would allow us to measure the isotropization time of the plasma and could provide first experimental evidence for photon double pulses at the yoctosecond time scale.

Fluctuations of photon arrival times in free atmosphere

In this paper we calculate the delay of the arrival times of visible photons on the focal plane of a telescope and its fluctuations as a function of local atmospheric conditions (temperature, pressure, chemical composition, seeing values) and telescope diameter. The aim of this paper is to provide a model for delay-time fluctuations accurate to the picosecond level, as required by several very high time resolution astrophysical applications, such as the comparison of radio and optical data on giant radio bursts from optical pulsars, and Hanbury Brown Twiss Intensity Interferometry with Cerenkov light detectors The results here presented have been calculated for the European Southern Observatory telescopes in Chile (New Technology Telescope (NTT), Very Large Telescope (VLT), European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), but the model can be easily applied to other sites and telescope diameters. Finally, we describe a theoretical mathematical model for calculating the Fried radius through the study of delay-time fluctuations.

Distortion of HBT Images by Meson Clouds

We study the effects of mesonic final state interactions on the Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry for mesons in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. The modification of the one-body amplitude of emitted mesons while going through a cloud of other mesons is estimated in the semiclassical approximation with a mesonic optical potential which incorporates both coherent forward scattering with other mesons and the absorption due to incoherent scattering in the meson cloud. We show how these effects result in the distortion of the HBT images.

Two-photon correlations of luminescence at the Bose-Einstein condensation of dipolar excitons

Correlations of luminescence intensity have been studied under Bose-Einstein condensation of dipolar excitons in the temperature range of 0.45-4.2 K. Photoexcited dipolar excitons were collected in a lateral trap in GaAs/AlGaAs Schottky-diode heterostructure with single wide (25 nm) quantum well under applied electric bias. Two-photon correlations were measured with the use of a classical Hanbury Brown - Twiss intensity interferometer (time resolution ~0.4 ns). Photon "bunching" has been observed near the Bose condensation threshold of dipolar excitons determined by the appearance of a narrow luminescence line of exciton condensate at optical pumping increase. The two-photon correlation function shows super-poissonian distribution at time scales of system coherence (<~1 ns). No photon bunching was observed at the excitation pumping appreciably below the condensation threshold. At excitation pumping increasing well above the threshold, when the narrow line of exciton condensate grows in the luminescence spectrum, the photon bunching is decreasing and finally vanishes - the two-photon correlator becomes poissonian reflecting the single-quantum-state origin of excitonic Bose condensate. Under the same conditions a first-order spatial correlator, measured by means of the luminescence interference from spatially separated condensate parts, remains significant. The discovered photon bunching is rather sensitive to temperature: it drops several times with temperature increase from 0.45 K up to 4.2 K. If assumed that the luminescence of dipolar excitons collected in the lateral trap reflects directly coherent properties of interacting exciton gas, the observed phenomenon of photon bunching nearby condensation threshold manifests phase transition in interacting exciton Bose gas.

New observing modes of a future HTN‐based distributed detection network for high time resolution and quantum optical astrophysics experiments

AbstractThis contribution aims to introduce the idea that a well‐evolved HTN of the far future, with the anticipated addition of very large apertures, could also be made to incorporate the ability to carry out photonic astronomy observations, particularly Optical VLBI in a revived Hanbury‐Brown and Twiss Intensity Interferometry (HBTII) configuration. Such an HTN could exploit its inherent rapid reconfigurational ability to become a multi‐aperture distributed photon‐counting network able to study higher‐order spatiotemporal photon correlations and provide a unique tool for direct diagnostics of astrophysical emission processes. We very briefly review various considerations associated with the switching of the HTN to a special mode in which single‐photon detection events are continuously captured for a posteriori intercorrelation. In this context, photon arrival times should be determined to the highest time resolution possible and extremely demanding absolute time keeping and absolute time distribution schemes should be devised and implemented in the HTN nodes involved. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Measuring Photon Antibunching from Continuous Variable Sideband Squeezing

We present a technique for measuring the second-order coherence function g(2)(tau) of light using a Hanbury Brown-Twiss intensity interferometer modified for homodyne detection. The experiment was performed entirely in the continuous-variable regime at the sideband frequency of a bright carrier field. We used the setup to characterize g(2)(tau) for thermal and coherent states and investigated its immunity to optical loss. We measured g(2)(tau) of a displaced-squeezed state and found a best antibunching statistic of g(2)(0)=0.11+/-0.18.

Hanbury-Brown and Twiss intensity correlations of parabosons

Abstract For a parabosonic field in a dominant single-mode, there is a diagonal P p -representation in the | α even , odd 〉 coherent state basis. It is used to analyze zero-time-interval intensity correlations of parabosons in a maximum-entropic state. As the mean number of parabosons decreases, there is a monotonic reduction to 2 p of the constant bosonic “factor of two” proportionality of the second-order versus the squared first-order intensity correlation function.

An improved quantum key distribution protocol based on second-order coherence

We improve the quantum key distribution protocol proposed by Pereira et al. [S.F. Pereira, Z.Y. Ou, H.J. Kimble, Phys. Rev. A 62 (2000) 042311], by employing the second-order coherence of optical fields, which can be easy experimentally measured with a Hanbury-Brown and Twiss intensity interferometer. It is shown that eavesdropping can be directly detected without sacrificing extra secret bits as test key. The efficiency of the improved system is enhanced greatly, since no secret bit needs to be discarded.

Intensity interferometry for a chaotic source with a collective flow and multiple scattering

We study the effects of a collective flow and multiple scattering on two-particle correlation measurements in Hanbury-Brown–Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry. While the derivation in this paper is not rigorous, we propose a semi-quantitative derivation to shed further light on the interesting RHIC HBT puzzle. We find that under a collective flow the effective source distribution in a two-particle correlation measurement depends on the initial source distribution. In addition, it depends on a collective flow phase function which consists of terms that tend to cancel each other. As the detected particles traverse from the source point to the freeze-out point, they are subject to multiple scattering with medium particles. We examine the effects of multiple scattering on HBT correlations. Applying the Glauber theory to multiple scattering at high energies and the optical model at intermediate energies, we find that multiple scattering leads to an absorption and an effective density distribution that depends on the initial source distribution.

Hanbury Brown Twiss effects in channel mixing normal-superconducting systems

An investigation of the role of the proximity effect in current cross correlations in multiterminal, channel-mixing, normal-superconducting systems is presented. The proposed experiment is an electrical analog of the optical Hanbury Brown Twiss intensity cross correlation experiment. A chaotic quantum dot is connected via quantum point contacts to two normal and one superconducting reservoir. For dominating coupling of the dot to the superconducting reservoir, a magnetic flux of the order of a flux quantum in the dot suppresses the proximity effect and reverses the sign of the cross correlations, from positive to negative. In the opposite limit, for a dominating coupling to the normal reservoirs, the proximity effect is weak and the cross correlation are positive for a nonideal contact between the dot and the superconducting reservoir. We show that in this limit the correlations can be explained with particle counting arguments.