Quantum and classical correlations of intense beams of light investigated via joint photodetection

We address joint photodetection as a method for discriminating between the classical correlations of a thermal beam divided by a beam splitter and the quantum entanglement of a twin beam obtained by parametric down-conversion. We show that for intense beams of light the detection of the difference photocurrent may be used, in principle, in order to reveal entanglement, while the simple measurement of the correlation coefficient is not sufficient. We have experimentally measured the correlation coefficient and the variance of the difference photocurrent for several classical and quantum states. Results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions taking into account the extra noise in the generated fields that is due to the pump laser fluctuations.