posted on 2023-01-11, 22:04authored byJulian Münzberg, Christoph Dittel, Maxime Lebugle, Andreas Buchleitner, Alexander Szameit, Gregor Weihs, Robert Keil
We investigate, in a four photon interference experiment in a laser-written waveguide structure, how symmetries control the suppression of many-body output events of a $J_x$ unitary. We show that totally destructive interference does not require mutual indistinguishability between all, but only between symmetrically paired particles, in agreement with recent theoretical predictions. The outcome of the experiment is well described by a quantitative simulation which accounts for higher order emission of the photon source, imbalances in the scattering network, partial distinguishability, and photon loss.