The Quantum Regime Operation of Beam Splitters and Interference Filters

The quantum Rayleigh spontaneous emission replaces entangled photons with independent ones in homogeneous dielectric media where single photons cannot propagate in a straight line. Single and independent groups of photons, described by the original bare states of Jaynes-Cummings model, deliver the correct expectation values for the number of photons carried by a photonic wavefront, its complex optical field, and phase quadratures. The intrinsic longitudinal field profile associated with a photonic wavefront is derived for any instantaneous number of photons. These photonic properties enable a step-by-step analysis of various beam splitters and interferometric filters. As a result, generalized expressions are derived for the correlation functions characterizing counting of coincident numbers of photons for fourth-order interference, whether classical or quantum optical, without entangled photons.