Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-laser-science-and-quantum-information-processing-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2007/5/1/solution

Represent the single-photon state by its two path probability amplitudes. The first Hadamard gate sends to . With for the lower-arm phase shifter, the complete Mach-Zehnder interferometer gives
The global phase has no effect on detection. By the Born rule,
They sum to one. At , port 1 is a dark port; at , the roles reverse. The result uses coherent addition of the path amplitudes, rather than addition of separate path probabilities.

New to topics? Read the docs here!