Looking Beyond Visibility: Resolving the Temporal Structure of Continuous-Wave Four-Photon Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference

Abstract:Hong-Ou-Mandel interference underpins many photonic quantum information protocols and is commonly characterized by a single visibility parameter. This quantity is typically obtained by averaging over a fixed coincidence window, thereby discarding details of the underlying temporal structure that are critical in continuous-wave processes. Four-photon interference with continuous-wave sources furthermore requires photon pairs with long coherence times, which we generate in microring resonators and measure with ultrafast time-resolved detection. Here, we model and resolve their interference and temporal structure by recording all four photon arrival times and mapping their relative delays onto a three-dimensional coincidence histogram relative to a trigger detection. The resulting structure preserves relative arrival-time correlations that are usually discarded and enables post-processed optimization of coincidence windows to trade off visibility against count rate. This method provides a general benchmark for continuous-wave sources in interference-based quantum network protocols.

arXiv:2610.21909 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2610.21909v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.21909 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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