Bunching of Photons When Two Beams Pass Through a a Beam Splitter

2003/12/03 by K. T. McDonald, McDonald, K. T., L. J. Wang +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0312032

8 pages, 2 figures

arxiv created 2003/12/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01

Abstract

Dirac has written "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference between two different photons never occurs." Indeed, a practical definition is that "classical" optics consists of phenomena due to the interference of photons only with themselves. However, photons obey Bose statistics which implies a ``nonclassical'' tendency for them to ``bunch''. For a simple example of nonclassical optical behavior, we consider two pulses of photons of a single frequency that are simultaneously incident on two sides of a lossless, 50:50 beam splitter.

Related

• Observations of the nonclassical feature of photon bunching on a beam splitter using coherent photons along the same input port
• A wave nature-based interpretation of the nonclassical feature of photon bunching on a beam splitter
• Bunching of Bell states
• The origin of anticorrelation for photon bunching on a beam splitter
• The origin of indistinguishability of quantum features in an interferometric system