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arXiv · 1706.08243

Interferometric control of the photon-number distribution

H. Esat Kondakci·Alexander Szameit·Ayman F. Abouraddy·Demetrios N. Christodoulides·Bahaa E. A. Saleh
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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 equal-amplitude 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.

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H. Esat Kondakci, Alexander Szameit, Ayman F. Abouraddy, Demetrios N. Christodoulides, Bahaa E. A. Saleh. 2017-06-26. Interferometric control of the photon-number distribution. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4992018

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