Description of states of two-photon interference in optical gating Michelson interferometer

Abstract

© 2015 SPIE. The interference of two photons in the optical gating Michelson interferometer is investigated. The phenomenon is studied using two different representations of photons: the space-time domain and a step-by-step two photon state evolution. Both representations lead to an equivalent description of the two-photon states which is the interference of four cases of two-photon traveling states, as implied by the evolution analysis. Additionally, the space-time domain analysis reveals that the classical interference of high-intensity light source is identical to the two-photon interference in the quantum regime except for a multiplicative factor of (n2), where n is the number of photons.