Two-particle indistinguishability and identification of boson-and-fermion species: a Fisher information approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Fisher-information based method to analyze two-particle indistinguishability and identify particle species, revealing that HOM-like effects are quantitatively similar for bosons and fermions and enabling species identification.

Contribution

It presents a novel Fisher-information approach to quantify indistinguishability and distinguish bosons from fermions in two-particle interference experiments.

Findings

Fisher information reproduces HOM effects for bosons and fermions.

HOM-like dip features are quantitatively similar for both particle types.

Method enables estimation of indistinguishability and species identification.

Abstract

We present a study on two-particle indistinguishability and particle-species identification by introducing a Fisher-information (FI) approach---in which two particles pass through a two-wave mixing operation and the number of particles is counted in one of the output modes. In our study, we first show that FI can reproduce the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect with two bosons or two fermions. In particular, it is found that even though bosons and fermions exhibit different physical behavior (i.e., "bunching" or "anti-bunching") due to their indistinguishability, the aspects of HOM-like dip are quantitatively same. We then provide a simple method for estimating the degree of two-particle indistinguishability in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer-type setup. The presented method also enables us to identify whether the particles are bosons or fermions. Our study will provide useful primitives for various study of boson and fermion characteristics.