Experimental demonstration of time-frequency duality of biphotons

Time-frequency duality, which enables control of optical waveforms by manipulating amplitudes and phases of electromagnetic fields, plays a pivotal role in a wide range of modern optics. The conventional one-dimensional (1D) time-frequency duality has been successfully applied to characterize the behavior of classical light, such as ultrafast optical pulses from a laser. However, the 1D treatment is not enough to characterize quantum mechanical correlations in the time-frequency behavior of multiple photons, such as the biphotons from parametric down conversion. The two-dimensional treatment is essentially required, but has not been fully demonstrated yet due to the technical problem. Here, we study the two-dimensional (2D) time-frequency duality duality of biphotons, by measuring two-photon distributions in both frequency and time domains. It was found that generated biphotons satisfy the Fourier limited condition quantum mechanically, but not classically, by analyzing the time-bandwidth products in the 2D Fourier transform. Our study provides an essential and deeper understanding of light beyond classical wave optics, and opens up new possibilities for optical synthesis in a high-dimensional frequency space in a quantum manner.