Superpositioned photon incident on Polarizing Beam Splitter

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diogenes500@gmail.com - 20 Feb 2005 23:05 GMT

Hi,

I'm wondering what happens when a photon in a polarization
superposition state ( |H> + |V> , disregarding normalization) is
incident upon a polarizing beam splitter. Does the PBS make the state
collapse into either H or V, sending the photon in one direction for
sure, or does the photon keep its superposition with "the H part"
of the state going one direction and "the V part" of the state
going another?

Thanks,
Hayden

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Bob Hearn - 24 Feb 2005 22:47 GMT

> I'm wondering what happens when a photon in a polarization
> superposition state ( |H> + |V> , disregarding normalization) is
> incident upon a polarizing beam splitter. Does the PBS make the state
> collapse into either H or V, sending the photon in one direction for
> sure,

> or does the photon keep its superposition with "the H part"
> of the state going one direction and "the V part" of the state
> going another?

yes.

More explicitly, we can write the action of the polarizing beam
splitter as the operator

|h-path><H| + |v-path><V| .

Applying this to 1/sqrt(2) (|H> + |V>) gives

1/sqrt(2) (|h-path> + |v-path>) .

- Bob

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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Research / February 2005

Superpositioned photon incident on Polarizing Beam Splitter