Experimental realization of Wheeler's delayed-choice GedankenExperiment

Abstract

The quantum "mystery which cannot go away" (in Feynman's words) of wave-particle duality is illustrated in a striking way by Wheeler's delayed-choice GedankenExperiment. In this experiment, the configuration of a two-path interferometer is chosen after a single-photon pulse has entered it : either the interferometer is \textit{closed} (\textit{i.e.} the two paths are recombined) and the interference is observed, or the interferometer remains \textit{open} and the path followed by the photon is measured. We report an almost ideal realization of that GedankenExperiment, where the light pulses are true single photons, allowing unambiguous which-way measurements, and the interferometer, which has two spatially separated paths, produces high visibility interference. The choice between measuring either the 'open' or 'closed' configuration is made by a quantum random number generator, and is space-like separated -- in the relativistic sense -- from the entering of the photon into the interferometer. Measurements in the closed configuration show interference with a visibility of 94%, while measurements in the open configuration allow us to determine the followed path with an error probability lower than 1%.