Indistinguishability of independent single photons

The indistinguishability of independent single photons is presented by decomposing the single photon pulse into the mixed state of different transform limited pulses. The entanglement between single photons and outer environment or other photons induces the distribution of the center frequencies of those transform limited pulses and makes photons distinguishable. Only the single photons with the same transform limited form are indistinguishable. In details, the indistinguishability of single photons from the solid-state quantum emitter and spontaneous parametric down conversion is examined with two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer. Moreover, experimental methods to enhance the indistinguishability are discussed, where the usage of spectral filter is highlighted.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Superluminal Noncommutative Photons

With the help of the Seiberg-Witten map, one can obtain an effective action of a deformed QED from a noncommutative QED. Starting from the deformed QED, we investigate the propagation of photons in the background of electromagnetic field, up to the leading order of the noncommutativity parameter. In our setting (both the electric and magnetic fields are parallel to the coordinate axis $x^1$ and the nonvanishing component of the noncommutativity parameter is $\theta^{23}$), we find that the electric field has no effect on the propagation of photons, but the velocity of photons can be larger than the speed of light ($c=1$) when the propagating direction of photons is perpendicular to the direction of background magnetic field, while the light-cone condition does not change when the propagating direction is parallel to the background magnetic field. The causality associated with the superluminal photons is discussed briefly.Comment: Revtex, 11 pages, v3: corrected an estimation on page 7 of deviation from the speed of ligh

Tailoring Single and Multiphoton Probabilities of a Single Photon On-Demand Source

As typically implemented, single photon sources cannot be made to produce single photons with high probability, while simultaneously suppressing the probability of yielding two or more photons. Because of this, single photon sources cannot really produce single photons on demand. We describe a multiplexed system that allows the probabilities of producing one and more photons to be adjusted independently, enabling a much better approximation of a source of single photons on demand.Comment: 4 pages, LaTex, 2 figures, twocolumn and RevTex Style for PR

Spatial entanglement of paired photons generated in cold atomic ensembles

Cold atomic ensembles can mediate the generation of entanglement between pairs of photons. Photons with specific directions of propagation are detected, and the entanglement can reside in any of the degrees of freedom that describe the whole quantum state of the photons: polarization, spatial shape or frequency. We show that the direction of propagation of the generated photons determines the spatial quantum state of the photons and therefore, the amount of entanglement generated. When photons generated in different directions are combined, this spatial distinguishing information can degrade the quantum purity of the polarization or frequency entanglement.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. A.; one figure (Fig. 3) was added, typos and labels in figure 2 were correcte

Entanglement of photons

It is argued that the title of this paper represents a misconception. Contrary to widespread beliefs it is electromagnetic field modes that are ``systems'' and can be entangled, not photons. The amount of entanglement in a given state is shown to depend on redefinitions of the modes; we calculate the minimum and maximum over all such redefinitions for several examples.Comment: 5 pages ReVTe

Experimental position-time entanglement with degenerate single photons

We report an experiment in which two-photon interference occurs between degenerate single photons that never meet. The two photons travel in opposite directions through our fibre-optic interferometer and interference occurs when the photons reach two different, spatially separated, 2-by-2 couplers at the same time. We show that this experiment is analogous to the conventional Franson-type entanglement experiment where the photons are entangled in position and time. We measure wavefunction overlaps for the two photons as high as 94 $\pm$ 3%.Comment: Updated to published version, new fig. 4., corrected typo