Interferometry with Two Pairs of Spin Correlated Photons

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experiment using two independent sources of spin correlated photon pairs to observe interference-like correlations, providing a new test for hidden variable theories in quantum mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup with two independent photon sources and demonstrates potential for testing hidden variable theories.

Findings

Observation of 4th-order-interference-like correlations

Potential to discriminate between quantum mechanics and hidden variable theories

Experimental design for testing fundamental quantum principles

Abstract

We propose a new experiment employing two independent sources of spin correlated photon pairs. Two photons from different unpolarized sources each pass through a polarizer to a detector. Although their trajectories never mix or cross they exhibit 4th-order-interference-like correlations when the other two photons interfere on a beam splitter even when the latter two do not pass any polarizers at all. A wave packet calculation shows that the experiment permits a very discriminatory test of hidden variable theories.