Experimental observation of counter-intuitive features of photonic bunching
Bosonic bunching is a term used to describe the well-known tendency of bosons to bunch together, and which differentiates their behavior from that of fermions or classical particles. However, in some situations, perfectly indistinguishable bosons may counter-intuitively bunch less than classical, distinguishable particles. Here, we report two such counter-intuitive multiphoton bunching effects observed with three photons in a three-mode balanced photonic Fourier interferometer. In this setting, we show that indistinguishable photons actually minimize the probability of bunching. We also show that any non-trivial value of the three-photon collective photonic phase leads to a decreased probability of all photons ending up in the same mode, even as we increase pairwise indistinguishability. Our experiments feature engineering of partial indistinguishability scenarios using both the time and the polarization photonic degrees of freedom, and a polarization-transparent 8-mode tunable interferometer with a quantum-dot source of single photons. Besides the foundational understanding, the observation of these counter-intuitive phenomena open news perspective in devising more efficient ways of routing photons for advantage in metrology and quantum computation.
Authors
- Nicolò Spagnolo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3471-2252)
- Carlos A. H. Fernandes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6515-6872)
- Francesco Ceccarelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9574-2899)
- Taira Giordani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7111-0272)
- Fabio Sciarrino (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1715-245X)
- Leonardo Novo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5428-2902)
- Niki Di Giano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0263-8115)
- Daniel J. Brod (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5925-4158)
- Ernesto F. Galvão (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2582-9918)
- Francesco Hoch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6589-6651)
- Alessia Suprano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2989-8881)
- Gonzalo Carvacho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4465-3401)
- Giacomo Corrielli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1329-8972)
- Roberto Osellame (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4457-9902)
- Giovanni Rodari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6056-4583)
- Riccardo Albiero (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4561-7640)
- Eugenio Caruccio
Institutions
- Universidade Federal Fluminense (BR)
- Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IT)
- International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (PT)
- Sapienza University of Rome (IT)
- Politecnico di Milano (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Light Science & Applications
- Published
- 2026-06-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-026-02250-4
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
- Type
- preprint
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 8.51
Funders
- European Commission
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
- Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
- HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia