Coherent Two-photon Backscattering and Induced Angular Quantum Correlations in Multiple-Scattered Two-Photon States of the Light

TL;DR

This paper investigates how multiple scattering in disordered media leads to coherent two-photon backscattering and angular quantum correlations, revealing how entanglement and material density influence these quantum optical phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of coherent two-photon backscattering in complex scattering environments without statistical assumptions, linking quantum correlations to entanglement dimensionality and material properties.

Findings

Coherent two-photon backscattering manifests as weak localization.

Quantum correlations depend on entanglement dimensionality and scattering density.

Increasing material density broadens the backscattering cone.

Abstract

We present the emergence of coherent two-photon backscattering, a manifestation of weak localization, in multiple scattering of maximally entangled pure and fully mixed two-photon states and examine the effect of entanglement and classical correlations. Quantum correlations in backscattering are investigated for finite three-dimensional disordered structures in the weak localization regime as well as systems of a small number of scatterers with specified spatial arrangements. No assumptions are made on the statistical behavior of the scattering matrix elements. Furthermore, we study the interplay between quantum correlations induced by multiple scattering and the correlations that may be present in the illumination fields, and how they are manifested in the output modes. We study the effect of the dimensionality of the entanglement and the angular distribution of the jointly measurable photon pairs on the emergence of enhancement and angular quantum correlations and show how quantum correlations can be used as a probe of the entanglement dimensionality. We show that by increasing the disordered material density, the width of the coherent two-photon backscattering cones increases, in accordance with the reduction of the mean free path length within the structure.