Regular Article

Observation of two-photon interference with continuous variables by homodyne detection

¹ Department of Engineering Science, The University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1 Chofugaoka, Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan
² Institute of Optoelectronic Engineering, College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, P.R. China
³ Advanced ICT Research Institute, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 588-2 Iwaoka, Nishi-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 651-2492, Japan

^a e-mail: daohuawu@gmail.com

Received: 4 June 2017
Received in final form: 2 August 2017
Published online: 19 October 2017

Abstract

We experimentally observed a two-photon interference between a squeezed vacuum state from an optical parametric amplifier and a weak coherent state on a beam splitter with continuous variables. The photon statistics properties of the mixed field were investigated by calculating the correlations among four permutations of measured quadratures components, which were obtained by two homodyne detection systems. This also means that the two-photon interference occurred at analysis frequency differing from the previous two-photon interference reports. The nonclassical effect of photon anti-bunching occurred when an amplitude squeezed vacuum state acted as one of interference sources. On the other hand, the photon bunching effect appeared when a phase squeezed vacuum state was employed.