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IOP Publishing, New Journal of Physics, 12(10), p. 123009, 2008

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/10/12/123009

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Illustration of quantum complementarity using single photons interfering on a grating

Journal article published in 2008 by V. Jacques, N. D. Lai, A. Dréau ORCID, D. Zheng, D. Chauvat, François Treussart ORCID, Philippe Grangier, Jean-François Roch
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

A recent experiment performed by Afshar et al (2007 Found. Phys. 37 295–305) has been interpreted as a violation of Bohr's complementarity principle between interference visibility and which-path information (WPI) in a two-path interferometer. We have reproduced this experiment, using true singlephoton pulses propagating in a two-path wavefront-splitting interferometer realized with a Fresnel's biprism, and followed by a grating with adjustable transmitting slits. The measured values of interference visibility V and WPI, characterized by the distinguishability parameter D, are found to obey the complementarity relation V2 + D2 6 1. This result demonstrates that the experiment can be perfectly explained by the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics.