Shot-by-shot imaging of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with an intensified sCMOS camera

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates high-resolution, shot-by-shot imaging of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference using an intensified sCMOS camera, revealing spatially separated photon pairs and achieving high interference visibility.

Contribution

It introduces a novel imaging approach for observing HOM interference with spatial resolution and quantifies photon pairs and interference visibility directly.

Findings

Achieved 96.3% HOM interference visibility.

Successfully retrieved spatial mode structure of photons.

Demonstrated a new low-noise high-resolution coincidence imaging scheme.

Abstract

We report the first observation of Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference of highly indistinguishable photon pairs with spatial resolution. Direct imaging of two-photon coalescence with an intensified sCMOS camera system clearly reveals spatially separated photons appearing pairwise within one of the two modes. With the use of the camera system we quantified the number of pairs and recovered the full HOM dip yielding 96.3% interference visibility, as well as retrieved the number of coalesced pairs. We retrieved the spatial mode structure of both interfering photons by performing a proof-of-principle demonstration of a new, low noise high resolution coincidence imaging scheme.