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

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how coherence manipulations of classical laser light can replicate quantum second-order intensity correlations, highlighting a classical approach to phenomena traditionally considered quantum.

Contribution

It introduces a coherence-based method to achieve quantum-like second-order correlations using classical optics and selective measurement techniques.

Findings

Classical coherence manipulations can mimic quantum second-order correlations.

Selective measurement creates inseparable phase relations between photons.

Orthogonal polarization bases satisfy local randomness in the process.

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.