INTERFERENCE OF CLASSICAL AND NONCLASSICAL LIGHT

Interference of multiphoton light, generated by non-linear optics methods, is analyzed with the scattering matrix formalism. It is shown that any interference effects of first or second order (in intensity) have close classical analogs with the same monoharmonic interference pattern and differing only in the visibility. But in the case of third- or higher-order interference the pattern is polyharmonic and its form depends on the statistics of the input light, so classical models give predictions differing qualitatively.