Multimode Hong-Ou-mandel interference.
We consider multimode two-photon interference at a beam splitter by photons created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The resulting interference pattern is shown to depend upon the transverse spatial symmetry of the pump beam. In an experiment, we employ the first-order Hermite-Gaussian modes in order to show that, by manipulating the pump beam, one can control the resulting two-photon interference behavior. We expect these results to play an important role in the engineering of quantum states of light for use in quantum information processing and quantum imaging.
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Caixa Postal 702, Belo Horizonte, MG 30123-970, Brazil. swalborn@fisica.ufmg.br
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