Classical visibility limit for three-photon interference

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.