Abstract

A theoretical treatment is given of the situation in which two photons produced in the parametric frequency splitting of light in a nonlinear medium are allowed to interfere. It is shown that there is no interference pattern in the usual sense of quantities that are of the second order in the field, but that fourth-order interference effects are present. These could be demonstrated by placing two photodetectors at positions x,x′ in the interference plane and measuring the joint probability of two detections as a function of x – x′. The probability is predicted to exhibit a cosine modulation with separation x – x′ of close to 100% visibility, even when the integration time in the experiment greatly exceeds the reciprocal bandwidth of the accepted photons. As a result two photons cannot be detected at two points separated by a distance corresponding to an odd number of half-interference fringes. This is an interference effect that violates the laws of classical probability.

© 1986 Optical Society of America