Discrimination between Nonorthogonal Two-photon Polarization States *

It is shown that generalized measurements, required for optimally discriminating between nonorthogonal joint polarization states of two indistinguishable photons, can be realized with the help of polarization-dependent twophoton absorption and by means of sum-frequency generation. Optimization schemes are investigated with respect to minimizing the error probability in inferring the states, as well as with respect to maximizing the probability of success for unambiguous discrimination. Moreover, an implementation of error-minimizing discrimination between N symmetric single-photon states is studied. The latter can be used to extract information from the inconclusive results occurring in unambiguous discrimination between three symmetric two-photon polarization states. 03.65.Bz, 03.67-a, 42.50.Dv Typeset using REVTEX ∗Contribution at the 8th Central-European Workshop on Quantum Optics, April 27 30, 2001