Abstract
It is shown theoretically and experimentally that the third-order interference of intensities, which is studied in many works performed in the last decade and is usually attributed to three-photon entanglement, can also be observed for classical light with a high visibility up to 81.8%. The calculations show that classical sources ensure an even higher visibility of the interference pattern up to 94.4% for fourth order intensity interference. Thus, a large visibility of the interference pattern of the third and higher orders cannot be considered an attribute of the nonclassical character of the effect.
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Original Russian Text © I.N. Agafonov, T.Sh. Iskhakov, A.N. Penin, M.V. Chekhova, 2007, published in Pis’ma v Zhurnal Éksperimental’noĭ i Teoreticheskoĭ Fiziki, 2007, Vol. 85, No. 8, pp. 465–470.
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Agafonov, I.N., Iskhakov, T.S., Penin, A.N. et al. Classical visibility limit for three-photon interference. Jetp Lett. 85, 381–385 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0021364007080073
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0021364007080073