Quantum interference effects in two-photon scattering by a macroscopic lossy sphere

Abstract

We investigate the quantum optical scattering of two-photon wavepackets by a macroscopic lossy sphere by means of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics in the form of modified Langevin noise formalism. The two ingoing photons with arbitrary frequency-polarization spectrum impinge onto the sphere along two different directions and, as consequence of matter losses, their scattering involves the three independent processes where two, one and zero outgoing photons survive. Non-collinearity of ingoing photons causes the existence of two different quantum paths they can follow upon scattering, this producing interference effects in the detection of the above three processes which is governed by the wavepacket spectral symmetry. By exploiting rotational invariance, we show that different classes of scattering geometries exist such that the coincidence detection of the scattered photons shows perfect constructive or destructive (Hong-Ou-Mandel) interference, both for symmetric and antisymmetric wavepackets. To assess the impact of matter dispersion/losses on quantum interference effects accompanying photons detection, we analyze the scattering of narrow band two-photon wavepackets by high-index dielectric lossy spheres. We show that classical Mie resonance peaks, due to their Fano-like traits, yield very strong constructive and destructive interference effects, occurring when the wavepacket carrier frequency matches the resonance frequency and side Fano dip frequency, respectively. In addition we consider the overall scattering probabilities of two, one and zero photons and we prove that, at the Mie resonance frequencies, they exhibit quantum interference effects which are extremely sensitive to the spectral symmetry of the input wavepacket, thus suggesting an efficient spectral technique assisted by matter losses to identify entanglement.