Single-Photon Michelson’s Interference Experiments Using Pulsed Light

Abstract

A Michelson’s interference experiment has been performed using a single-photon counting under the condition that at most one photon is present in the interferometer. A CW mode-locked Ar⁺ laser has been employed as a light source. It has been found that the dependence of the visibility on the difference in the two arm lengths measured on a single-photon level is the same as that for the multi-photon interference experiment. This dependence and the distribution of the photon detection time measured simultaneously by a time-correlated single-photon counting method have been found to be explained well by assuming that all the photons in the mode-locked laser pulse examined have the same temporal and spectral characteristics. A quantum mechanical analysis of this kind of experiment is also presented.