A Generalized Formulation of Two-Particle Interference

TL;DR

This paper presents a unified theoretical framework for two-particle interference, encompassing both the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss and Hong-Ou-Mandel effects, and proposes an intermediate experiment to demonstrate the continuum of this quantum phenomenon.

Contribution

A generalized formulation of two-particle interference that unifies HBT and HOM effects and introduces a new intermediate experimental setup.

Findings

HBT and HOM effects are special cases of a unified interference phenomenon.

A new realizable experiment demonstrates intermediate two-particle interference.

The analysis shows two-particle interference as a single, versatile quantum phenomenon.

Abstract

Two-photon interference is an interesting quantum phenomenon that is usually captured in two distinct types of experiments, namely the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) experiment and the Hong- Ou-Mandel (HOM) experiment. While the HBT experiment was carried out much earlier in 1956, with classical light, the demonstration of the HOM effect came much later in 1987. Unlike the former, the latter has frequently been argued to be a purely quantum effect. A generalized formulation of two-particle interference is presented here. The HOM and the quantum HBT effects emerge as special cases in the general analysis. A realizable two-particle interference experiment, which is intermediate between the two effects, is proposed and analyzed. Thus two-particle interference is shown to be a single phenomenon with various possible implementations, including the HBT and HOM setups.