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Physical Review Letters

Can Two-Photon Correlation of Chaotic Light Be Considered as Correlation of Intensity Fluctuations?

Giuliano Scarcelli, V. Berardi, Yanhua H. Shih

Published Feb 14, 2006• 307 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Two-photon correlation phenomena, including the historical experiment of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, may have to be described quantum mechanically, regardless of whether the source of radiation is classical or quantum. Supporting this point, we present a ghost imaging type of second-order spatial correlation experiment of chaotic light to show that the classical understanding based on the concept of statistical intensity fluctuations does not give a correct interpretation for the observation. From a practical point of view, this experiment demonstrates the possibility of having high contrast lensless two-photon imaging with chaotic light, suggesting imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.96.063602

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Two-photon correlation phenomena, including the historical experiment of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, may have to be described quantum mechanically, regardless of whether the source of radiation is classical or quantum. Supporting this point, we present a ghost imaging type of second-order spatial correlation experiment of chaotic light to show that the classical understanding based on the concept of statistical intensity fluctuations does not give a correct interpretation for the observation. From a practical point of view, this experiment demonstrates the possibility of having high contrast lensless two-photon imaging with chaotic light, suggesting imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.
We present a quantum two-photon interference approach to two-photon correlation phenomena of chaotic light, including the historical experiment of Hanbury Brown and Twiss. We argue against the interpretation of such phenomena in terms of a classical statistical correlation between intensity fluctuations. To support our view, we show a ‘ghost’ imaging experiment with chaotic light for which the classical understanding does not give a satisfactory interpretation. We also provide a two-photon optical picture of ghost imaging with chaotic light in terms of two-photon phase-conjugate mirrors which is very advantageous because it yields lensless two-photon imaging, suggesting imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.
Two-photon correlation phenomena of chaotic light, including the historical Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, are essentially the quantum effect of two-photon interference, instead of the classical statistical correlation between intensity fluctuations. To support our view, we analyze a "ghost" imaging experiment with chaotic light for which the classical understanding does not give a satisfactory interpretation. We also provide a two-photon optical picture of ghost imaging with chaotic light in terms of a two-photon phase-conjugate mirror, which suggests lensless imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.
Two-photon correlation phenomena of chaotic light, including the historical Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, are essentially quantum effect of two-photon interference, instead of classical statistical correlation between intensity fluctuations. To support our view, we analyze a "ghost" imaging experiment with chaotic light for which the classical understanding does not give a satisfactory interpretation. We also provide a two-photon optical picture of ghost imaging with chaotic light in terms of two-photon phase-conjugate mirror which suggests lensless imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.
Usually HBT effect can be interpreted by classical (intensity fluctuation correlation) and quantum (interference of two-photon probability amplitudes) theories properly at the same time. In this manuscript, we report a deliberately designed experiment in which two chaotic light beams has the same intensity fluctuation but mutual-orthogonal polarizations to each other so there will be no interference of two-photon probability amplitudes. Classical and quantum theory give different predictions on if there should be HBT (photon bunching) effect or not in the experiment. The experiment results are used to test the two different predictions. At the end, both the temporal and spatial HBT effects are observed.
In a near-field three-photon correlation measurement, we observed the third-order temporal and spatial correlation functions of chaotic thermal light in the single-photon counting regime. In the study, we found that the probability of jointly detecting three randomly radiated photons from a chaotic thermal source by three individual detectors is 666 times greater if the photodetection events fall in the coherence time and coherence area of the radiation field than if they do not. From the viewpoint of quantum mechanics, the observed phenomenon is the result of three-photon interference. By making use of this property, we measured the three-photon thermal light lensless ghost image of a double spot and achieved higher visibility compared with the two-photon thermal light ghost image.
Abstract We present an experimental technique that can accurately measure the high-order photon correlations of various light fields based on double Hanbury Brown–Twiss scheme. The system consists of four conventional binary response single-photon counting modules which are non-photon-number-resolving detectors. We theoretically analyze the effects of the experimental conditions on the high-order photon correlations of coherent, chaotic thermal, Fock and squeezed vacuum states with considering the overall efficiency and background noise. In experiment, we determine the proper resolution time from 2 9 = 512 ns to 2 11 = 2048 ns and counting rate from 10 kc s −1 to 100 kc s −1 for characterizing the exact second-, third- and fourth-order photon correlations of chaotic thermal state. At complete time delays, we also observe the third- and fourth-order photon correlations of chaotic thermal state, with the maximum high-order correlation values of 5.99 ± 0.02 and 23.9 ± 0.2 respectively, which are in good agreement with the theoretical values of 6 and 24. The demonstrated experimental technique with high accuracy is a promising tool for investigating quantum optical coherence and ghost imaging.