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arXiv · 1412.1549

Experimental Observation of Simultaneous Wave and Particle Behaviors in a Narrowband Single Photon's Wave Packe

H. Yan·K. Liao·Z. Deng·J. He·Z. Y. Xue·Z. M. Zhang·S. L. Zhu
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Abstract

Light's wave-particle duality is at the heart of quantum mechanics and can be well illustrated by Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. The choice of inserting or removing the second classical (quantum) beam splitter in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer determines the classical (quantum) wave-particle behaviors of a photon. In this paper, we report our experiment using the classical beam splitter to observe the simultaneous wave-particle behaviors in the wave-packet of a narrowband single photon. This observation suggests that it is necessary to generalize the current quantum wave-particle duality theory. Our experiment demonstrates that the produced wave-particle state can be considered an additional degree of freedom and can be utilized in encoding quantum information.

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H. Yan, K. Liao, Z. Deng, J. He, Z. Y. Xue, Z. M. Zhang, S. L. Zhu. 2014-12-04. Experimental Observation of Simultaneous Wave and Particle Behaviors in a Narrowband Single Photon's Wave Packe. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.91.042132

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