Coherence manipulations of Poisson-distributed coherent photons for the second-order intensity correlation

Abstract

Unlike one-photon (first order) intensity correlation, two-photon (second order) intensity correlation is known to be impossible to achieve by any classical means. Over the last several decades, such quantum features have been intensively demonstrated for anti-correlation in the Hong-Ou-Mandel effects and nonlocal correlation in Bell inequality violation. Here, we present coherence manipulations of attenuated laser light to achieve such a quantum feature using pure coherence optics. Unlike the common understanding of the two-photon intensity correlations, the present coherence approach gives an equivalent classical version to the known quantum approach. To excite the coherence quantum features between paired coherent photons, a selective measurement process plays an essential role in creating the inseparable joint phase relation between independent local parameters. The local randomness is also satisfied in both parties using orthonormal polarization bases of a single photon.