PHOTON ANTIBUNCHING BY DESTRUCTIVE 2-PHOTON INTERFERENCE

A different way of producing antibunched light was experimentally demo nstrated in which the production process is difficult to understand by a naive photon picture. A degenerate beam of down-converted photon pa irs from a nonlinear crystal pumped by pulsed light was mixed with coh erent local oscillator pulses by a beam splitter, and the intensity au tocorrelation of one of the output beams was measured. It showed two-p hoton interference fringes as the phase difference of the two input fi elds was varied, and showed antibunching when the interference was des tructive.