Abstract

The Hong-Ou-Mandel effect [1] is a demonstration of quantum interference between pairs of indistinguishable bosons [2]. It is one of the milestone experiments in quantum optics and is used nowadays to characterize single photon sources and linear optics set-ups. In this talk, I will present our first realization of the Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment with massive particles. A Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable helium placed in a moving 1D optical lattice emits pairs of atoms in two quantum-correlated beams [3,4]. We then redirect the pairs towards the two input ports of a Bragg beam splitter and measure the density-density correlation of the two output ports. By varying the spatial overlap of the two beams on the beam splitter, we are able to tune and reveal the indistinguishable nature of the atoms.

[1] C. K. Hong et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2044 (1987) [2] R. J. Lewis-Swan & K. V. Kheruntsyan, Nature Communications 5, 3752 (2014) [3] M. Bonneau et al. , Phys. Rev. A 87 , 061603®, (2013) [4] K. Kheruntsyan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 260401 (2012)