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Physical Review A

What we can learn about single photons in a two-photon interference experiment

Dmitry Strekalov, T. B. Pittman, Yanhua H. Shih

Published Jan 1, 1998• 56 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report a two-photon interference experiment in which a single-photon wave-packet concept fails to give a correct prediction, but the two-photon wave-packet, or biphoton, concept is helpful. Based on our experiment, we argue that single-photon wave-packet information available from two-photon measurement is limited.
DOI
10.1103/physreva.57.567

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In his famous book, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Dirac stated that “... photon ... interferes only with itself. Interference between two different photons never occurs.” However, two-photon interference has been demonstrated experimentally. Was Dirac wrong? We report an new experiment in this paper. It demonstrated that two-photon interference can not be considered the interference of two photons. “Two-photon” is not two photons. Two-photon is a single entity, which is just like a photon. We may call it biphoton. Dirac was correct. Biphoton interferes only with itself.
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