Interferometric control of the photon-number distribution

Abstract

We demonstrate deterministic control over the photon-number distribution by interfering two coherent beams within a disordered photonic lattice. By sweeping a relative phase between two equalamplitude coherent fields with Poissonian statistics that excite adjacent sites in a lattice endowed with disorder-immune chiral symmetry, we measure an output photon-number distribution that changes periodically between super-thermal and sub-thermal photon statistics upon ensemble averaging. Thus, the photon-bunching level is controlled interferometrically at a fixed mean photon-number by gradually activating the excitation symmetry of the chiral-mode pairs with structured coherent illumination and without modifying the disorder level of the random system itself.

Engineering Super‐Poissonian Photon Statistics of Spatial Light Modes

“…The photon statistics are fundamental quantum mechanical properties of light sources. [ 16–19,22 ] Here, we experimentally demonstrated the shaping of spatial light modes with engineered photon statistics at different spatial positions. Our work relies on the sequential modulation of coherent laser beams through the encoding of Kolmogorov phase screens in a DMD.…”

“…202300117 Here, we demonstrate the possibility of using spatial modulation to control the photon fluctuations of the light field, enabling the engineering of spatial light modes with tailored statistics. [17][18][19] Specifically, we prepare Laguerre-Gauss and Hermitte-Gauss modes with subthermal, thermal, and super-thermal photon statistics at different pixels. This is achieved by encoding phase screens possessing Kolmogorov statistics in a digital micromirror device (DMD).…”

Parity-Induced Thermalization Gap in Disordered Ring Lattices

“…The tight-binding lattices have been suggested to study disorder-immune chiral symmetry [16]. The resulting thermalization gap, not by parity, is circuitously confirmed in one-dimensional disordered lattices [17,18]. Inspired by the works on photonic thermalization gap [16] and the effect of lattice topology [19], we investigate the scenario of parity-dependent disorder-immune chiral symmetry in ring lattices, chiral symmetry for even-sited ring lattices, and chiral-symmetry breaking for odd-sited ones.…”

Can a photonic thermalization gap arise in disordered non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems?

“…In one-dimensional Hermitian systems, the emergence of a chiral symmetry protected photonic thermalization gap has been investigated theoretically and experimentally [15][16][17][18][19]. A system is said to possess a chiral symmetry if a) there are eigenvalues (labeled by integers m and −m) that appear in pairs whose real and imaginary parts have opposite signs, and b) the associated eigenstates satisfy the relation φ m n = (−1) n φ −m n , where n is the space coordinate.…”

“…The emergence of a photon thermalization gap [15][16][17][18][19] is striking and counterintuitive, as it implies that, beyond the regime of weak disorder, the degree of photon coherence in the underlying system can be continuously improved by increasing the disorder strength. This result was obtained for purely Hermitian systems with a chiral symmetry, e.g., a photonic system of a set of ideal parallel coupled waveguides with the values of the refractive index being purely real, where there is no emission and/or absorption.…”