A Test of a New Type of Stellar Interferometer on Sirius

Brown, Robert; Twiss, R. Q.

doi:10.1038/1781046a0

Cited by 1,509 publications

(1,136 citation statements)

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“…Information about the space-time evolution of the reaction zone can be obtained via intensity interferometry. The principle behind such experiments is similar to the intensity interferometry [43] employed to determine the radius of stars, where both singles (Y i ) and coincident (Y 12 ) yields of photons from the same source (star) are measured. Intuitively, one expects the correlation to be small if the source size is large and a large correlation from a small source.…”

Section: Space-time Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Nuclear Multifragmentation

Gupta

Mekjian

Tsang

2001

Advances in the Physics of Particles and Nuclei

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The equation of state of nuclear matter suggests that at suitable beam energies the disassembling hot system formed in heavy ion collisions will pass through a liquid-gas coexistence region. Searching for the signatures of the phase transition has been a very important focal point of experimental endeavours in heavy-ion collisions, in the last fifteen years. Simultaneously theoretical models have been developed to provide information about the equation of state and reaction mechanisms consistent with the experimental observables.

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Section: Space-time Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid-Gas Phase Transition in Nuclear Multifragmentation

Gupta

Mekjian

Tsang

2001

Advances in the Physics of Particles and Nuclei

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“…g (2) (Δz) g (4) (Δz) g (6) (Δz) (Δz) g (5) (Δz) Figure 2 | Many-body correlation functions along the longitudinal direction (temporal dimension on the detector). The data is averaged over the x and y transverse directions using ∼1 cm × 1 cm spatial bins.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, when one of the particles is taken to large separation (that is, z i ∼ > 2 mm in our case), one recovers the two-body correlation function from this plot, along the remaining dimension. The complete fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-order correlation functions, g (4) ( z 1 , z 2 , z 3 ), g (5) ( z 1 , z 2 , z 3 , z 4 ), g (6) ( z 1 , z 2 , z 3 , z 4, , z 5 ) require four-, five-and six-dimensional plots respectively, so for clarity we have plotted these in Fig. 2c-e similarly to g (3) , that is, for equal spatial separations for all particles.…”

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confidence: 99%

Ideal n-body correlations with massive particles

et al. 2013

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In 1963 Glauber introduced the modern theory of quantum coherence 1 , which extended the concept of first-order (onebody) correlations, describing phase coherence of classical waves, to include higher-order (n-body) quantum correlations characterizing the interference of multiple particles. Whereas the quantum coherence of photons is a mature cornerstone of quantum optics, the quantum coherence properties of massive particles remain largely unexplored. To investigate these properties, here we use a uniquely correlated 2 source of atoms that allows us to observe n-body correlations up to the sixthorder at the ideal theoretical limit (n!). Our measurements constitute a direct demonstration of the validity of one of the most widely used theorems in quantum many-body theory-Wick's theorem 3 -for a thermal ensemble of massive particles. Measurements involving n-body correlations may play an important role in the understanding of thermalization of isolated quantum systems 4 and the thermodynamics of exotic many-body systems, such as Efimov trimers 5 .Glauber's modern theory of optical coherence and the famous Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect 6 were pivotal in the establishment of the field of quantum optics. Importantly, the definition of a coherent state required coherence to all orders, which for example distinguishes a monochromatic but incoherent thermal source of light from a truly coherent source such as a laser. Higher-order correlation functions therefore provide a more rigorous test of coherence.Higher-order correlations, characterized by an n-body correlation function g (n) , are of general interest and have been investigated in many fields of physics including astronomy 6 , particle physics 7 , quantum optics 8 , and quantum atom optics 9 . In particular they have been a fruitful area of research in the field of quantum optics, where they have been used to investigate the properties of laser light, including heralded single photons 10 , and the statistics of parametric down-conversion sources 11 . State-of-the-art quantum optics experiments have measured photon correlation functions up to sixth order for quasi-thermal sources 8 , allowing the possibility of performing full quantum state tomography 12 .Higher-order correlations experiments with massive particles are currently approaching the same level of maturity as with photons. So far, experiments have directly observed correlations up to fourth order with single-atom-sensitive detection techniques for ultracold atomic bosons 9,13,14 , and second-order correlations for an atomic source of fermions 15 demonstrating the uniquely quantum mechanical property of atom-atom antibunching. Alternative, indirect techniques have also been employed to investigate higher-order correlations, including the measurements of twobody (photoassociation 16 ) and three-body 17 loss rates that are sensitive, respectively, to second-and third-order correlation functions. Interestingly, fermionic atom pairs 18 and fermionic antibunching 19 have also been observed in the atomic shot no...

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“…It revealed that the sharp L4 emission line attributed to the positive trion (X + ) showed clear photon anti-bunching behavior against the X 0 and X -emissions when the sharp X + emission line was introduced into the so-called HBT setup [14] together with either X 0 or X − emission lines. This demonstrates that the excitonic emissions of the neutral exciton X 0 and the charged excitons X + and X -are single-photon emission processes delivering single photon to either one of the three excitonic processes under every pulsed photo-excitation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%