Bunching of Bell states

Abstract

The bunching of two single photons on a beam-splitter is a fundamental quantum effect, first observed by Hong, Ou and Mandel. It is a unique interference effect that relies only on the photons' indistinguishability and not on their relative phase. We generalize this effect by demonstrating the bunching of two Bell states, created in two passes of a nonlinear crystal, each composed of two photons. When the two Bell states are indistinguishable, phase insensitive destructive interference prevents the outcome of four-fold coincidence between the four spatial-polarization modes. For certain combinations of the two Bell states, we demonstrate the opposite effect of anti-bunching. We relate this result to the number of distinguishable modes in parametric down-conversion.