Illustration of quantum complementarity using single photons interfering on a grating

V. Jacques (1) , N.D. Lai (1) , A. Dréau (1) , D. Zheng (1) , D. Chauvat (1) , François Treussart (1) , Philippe Grangier (2) , Jean-François Roch (1, 2)

1 LPQM - Laboratoire de Photonique Quantique et Moléculaire
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique quantique

A recent experiment performed by Afshar et al (2007 Found. Phys. 37 295–305) has been interpreted as a violation of Bohr's complementarity principle between interference visibility and which-path information (WPI) in a two-path interferometer. We have reproduced this experiment, using true singlephoton pulses propagating in a two-path wavefront-splitting interferometer realized with a Fresnel's biprism, and followed by a grating with adjustable transmitting slits. The measured values of interference visibility V and WPI, characterized by the distinguishability parameter D, are found to obey the complementarity relation V2 + D2 6 1. This result demonstrates that the experiment can be perfectly explained by the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Domains: Quantum Physics [quant-ph]

V. Jacques, N.D. Lai, A. Dréau, D. Zheng, D. Chauvat, et al.. Illustration of quantum complementarity using single photons interfering on a grating. New Journal of Physics, 2008, 10, pp.123009. ⟨10.1088/1367-2630/10/12/123009⟩. ⟨hal-00570459⟩