Holographic quantum imaging: Reconstructing spatial properties via two-particle interference

Abstract

Two particle interference phenomena, such as the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, are a direct manifestation of the nature of the symmetry properties of indistinguishable particles as described by quantum mechanics. The HOM effect has recently been applied as a tool for pure state tomography of a single photon. In this article, we generalize the method to extract additional information for a pure state and extend this to the full tomography of mixed states as well. The formalism is kept general enough to apply to both boson and fermion based interferometry. Our theoretical discussion is accompanied by two proposals of interferometric setups that allow the measurement of a tomographically complete set of observables for single photon quantum states.