Abstract
This chapter discusses fourth-order interference of light. Fourth-order interference provides a means for distinguishing classical and non-classical light, since an optical field can exhibit non-classical fourth-order interference effects even when the usual second-order interference effects cannot be observed. Such fourth-order interference effects can be observed with correlated photons produced by parametric down-conversion. In non-classical fourth-order interference, the entanglement of the down-converted beams results in variation of the effective source area for the signal beam with a change in the diameter of the pinhole in the idler beam. Fourth-order interference effects can also be observed when pairs of photons enter one or more interferometers, and the coincidence rate is monitored at the output ports. In this arrangement, the two photons traveled to two photodetectors via two unbalanced Michelson interferometers, which were adjusted so that the difference in the propagation time between the longer and the shorter paths was much greater than the coherence time of the individual photons but was the same in both channels.
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