Abstract

The interference of two photons at a beam splitter is at the core of many quantum photonic technologies, such as quantum key distribution or linear-optics quantum computing. Observing high-visibility interference is challenging because of the difficulty of realizing indistinguishable single-photon sources. Here, we perform a two-photon interference experiment using phase-randomized weak coherent states with different mean photon numbers. We place a tight upper bound on the expected coincidences for the case when the incident wavepackets contain single photons, allowing us to observe the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect. We find that the interference visibility is at least as large as ${0.995}_{-0.013}^{+0.005}$.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

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