Fringe visibility and distinguishability in two-path interferometer with an asymmetric beam splitter

Abstract

We study the fringe visibility and the distinguishability of a general Mach-Zehnder interferometer with an asymmetric beam splitter. Both the fringe visibility V and the distinguishability D are affected by the input state of the particle characterized by the Bloch vectorand the second asymmetric beam splitter characterized by paramter β. For the total system is initially in a pure state, it is found that the fringe visibility reaches the upper bound and the distinguishability reaches the lower bound when cos β = −S x . The fringe visibility obtain the maximum only if S x = 0 and β = π/2 when the input particle is initially in a mixed state. The complementary relationship V 2 + D 2 ≤ 1 is proved in a general Mach-Zehnder interferometer with an asymmetric beam splitter, and the conditions for the equality are also presented.

Fringe visibility and correlation in Mach-Zehnder interferometer with an asymmetric beam splitter

“…(1) Quantum discord for the pure state at the output of MZI By simple calculations, we can obtain the QD between the particle and the WPD when their final state is in pure state D(ρ QD 1 ) = J (ρ QD 1 ). (23)…”

Fringe visibility and correlation in Mach–Zehnder interferometer with an asymmetric beam splitter

“…[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] In addition, the complementary relationship in a general MZI with an asymmetric beam splitter (BS) has also attracted great attention. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Originally, the uncertainty principle was attributed to the absence of interference fringe. Ever since the proposal that the entanglement is responsible for the loss of interference, [30] a detector is introduced to the MZI, which is capable of making the path taken by the interfering particle and called the whichpath detector (WPD).…”

Experimental investigation of wave-particle duality relations in asymmetric beam interference

“…Nevertheless, the asymmetric case, where the beam splitters (BSs) are not balanced or the photon suffers from loss on the BSs, has not been investigated as much as the symmetric case. Over the past years, several theoretical analyses of asymmetric interference with a WWD have been presented [18,[32][33][34][35].…”