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

K. T. McDonald; L. J. Wang

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arXiv · quant-ph/0312032

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

K. T. McDonald·L. J. Wang

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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.

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K. T. McDonald, L. J. Wang. 2003-12-03. Bunching of Photons When Two Beams Pass Through a a Beam Splitter. https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0312032

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