Comprehensive experimental test of quantum erasure

In an interferometer, path information and interference visibility are incompatible quantities. Complete determination of the path will exclude any possibility of interference, rendering the visibility zero. However, if the composite object and probe state is pure, it is, under certain conditions, possible to trade the path information for improved (conditioned) visibility. Such a procedure is called quantum erasure. We have performed such experiments with polarization entangled photon pairs. Using a partial polarizer we could vary the degree of entanglement between object and probe. We could also vary the interferometer splitting ratio and thereby vary the a priori path predictability. We have tested quantum erasure under a number of different experimental conditions and found good agreement between experiments and theory.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, REVTe

Complementarity and the uncertainty relations

We formulate a general complementarity relation starting from any Hermitian operator with discrete non-degenerate eigenvalues. We then elucidate the relationship between quantum complementarity and the Heisenberg-Robertson's uncertainty relation. We show that they are intimately connected. Finally we exemplify the general theory with some specific suggested experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, REVTeX, uses epsf.sty and multicol.st

Quantum interference, complementarity and entanglement

NR 2014080