Fast reconstruction of programmable integrated interferometers.

Programmable linear optical interferometers are important for classical and quantum information technologies, as well as for building hardware-accelerated artificial neural networks. Recent results showed the possibility of constructing optical interferometers that could implement arbitrary transformations of input fields even in the case of high manufacturing errors. The building of detailed models of such devices drastically increases the efficiency of their practical use.

Time-domain Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of quasi-thermal fields and its application in linear optical circuit characterization.

We study temporal correlations of interfering quasi-thermal fields, obtained by scattering laser radiation on a rotating ground glass disk. We show that the Doppler effect causes oscillations in the temporal cross correlation function. Furthermore, we propose how to use Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of quasi-thermal fields in the time domain to characterize linear optical circuits.