Two-photon interference with thermal light

Abstract

The study of entangled states has greatly improved the basic understanding about two-photon interferometry. Two-photon interference is not the interference of two photons but the result of superposition among indistinguishable two-photon amplitudes. The concept of two-photon amplitude, however, has generally been restricted to the case of entangled photons. In this letter we report an experimental study that may extend this concept to the general case of independent photons. The experiment also shows interesting practical applications regarding the possibility of obtaining high resolution interference patterns with thermal sources.