Predictability, Distinguishability and Entanglement

Abstract

Recent times have seen a spurt of research activity focused on "completing" certain wave-particle duality relations using entanglement or polarization. These studies use a duality relation involving path-predictability, and not path-distinguishability. Quantum origins of these results are explored here, in the more general framework of multipath quantum interference. Multipath interference with a path-detector is theoretically analyzed to find the connection between predictability and distinguishability. It is shown that entanglement is what quantitatively connects distinguishability with predictability. Thus, a duality relation between distinguishability and coherence, can also be viewed as a triality between predictability, entanglement and coherence. There exist two different kind of duality relations in the literature, which pertain to two different kinds of interference experiments, with or without a path-detector. Results of this study show that the two duality relations are quantitatively connected via entanglement. The roots of the new results in the classical optical domain, including the polarization coherence theorem, can be understood in the light of this work. Additionally, the triality relations obtained can quantify wave-particle duality in the interesting case of a quanton with an internal degree of freedom. The relations can also be employed to experimentally determine the degree of bipartite entanglement.