Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of more than 10 indistinguishable atoms

Abstract

When two indistinguishable bosons interfere at a beam splitter, they both exit through the same output port. This foundational quantum-mechanical phenomenon, known as the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, has become a cornerstone in the field of quantum information. It also extends to many indistinguishable particles, resulting in complex interference patterns. However, despite of its fundamental and applied interest, the many-particle effect has only been observed in notoriously lossy photonic systems, but a realization with atomic systems has remained elusive until now. Here, we demonstrate HOM interference with up to 12 indistinguishable neutral atoms in a system with negligible loss. Our single-particle counting clearly reveals parity oscillations, a bunching envelope and genuine multi-partite entanglement, defining features of the multi-particle HOM effect. Our technique offers the potential for scaling to much larger numbers, presenting promising applications in quantum information with indistinguishable particles and Heisenberg-limited atom interferometry.