Quantum state preparation and conditional coherence

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Mar 18;88(11):113601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.113601. Epub 2002 Mar 1.

Abstract

It is well known that spontaneous parametric down-conversion can be used to probabilistically prepare single-photon states. We have performed an experiment in which arbitrary superpositions of zero- and one-photon states can be prepared by appropriate postselection. The optical phase, which is meaningful only for superpositions of photon number, is related to the relative phase between the zero- and one-photon states. Whereas the light from spontaneous parametric down-conversion has an undefined phase, we show that this technique collapses one beam to a state of well-defined optical phase when a measurement succeeds on the other beam.