TY - GEN A1 - Menzel, Ralf A1 - Heuer, Axel A1 - Milonni, Peter W. T1 - Entanglement, complementarity, and vacuum fields in spontaneous parametric down-conversion T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Using two crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a parallel setup, we observe two-photon interference with high visibility. The high visibility is consistent with complementarity and the absence of which-path information. The observations are explained as the effects of entanglement or equivalently in terms of interfering probability amplitudes and also by the calculation of a second-order field correlation function in the Heisenberg picture. The latter approach brings out explicitly the role of the vacuum fields in the down-conversion at the crystals and in the photon coincidence counting. For comparison, we show that the Hong–Ou–Mandel dip can be explained by the same approach in which the role of the vacuum signal and idler fields, as opposed to entanglement involving vacuum states, is emphasized. We discuss the fundamental limitations of a theory in which these vacuum fields are treated as classical, stochastic fields. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1077 KW - complementarity KW - vacuum fields KW - entanglement KW - Hong-Ou-Mandel effect KW - spontaneous parametric down-conversion Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-473542 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1077 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Menzel, Ralf A1 - Heuer, Axel A1 - Milonni, Peter W. T1 - Entanglement, Complementarity, and Vacuum Fields in Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion JF - Atoms N2 - Using two crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a parallel setup, we observe two-photon interference with high visibility. The high visibility is consistent with complementarity and the absence of which-path information. The observations are explained as the effects of entanglement or equivalently in terms of interfering probability amplitudes and also by the calculation of a second-order field correlation function in the Heisenberg picture. The latter approach brings out explicitly the role of the vacuum fields in the down-conversion at the crystals and in the photon coincidence counting. For comparison, we show that the Hong-Ou-Mandel dip can be explained by the same approach in which the role of the vacuum signal and idler fields, as opposed to entanglement involving vacuum states, is emphasized. We discuss the fundamental limitations of a theory in which these vacuum fields are treated as classical, stochastic fields. KW - complementarity KW - vacuum fields KW - entanglement KW - Hong-Ou-Mandel effect KW - spontaneous parametric down-conversion Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/atoms7010027 SN - 2218-2004 VL - 7 IS - 1 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER -