Induced Coherence, Vacuum Fields, and Complementarity in Biphoton Generation

It is well established that spontaneous parametric down-conversion with induced coherence across two coupled interferometers results in high-visibility single-photon interference. We describe experiments in which additional photon channels are introduced such that "which-path" information is made possible and the fringe visibility in single-photon interference is reduced in accordance with basic notions of complementarity. However, these additional pathways result in nearly perfect visibility when photons are counted in coincidence. A simplified theoretical model accounts for these observations and attributes them directly to the vacuum fields at the different crystals.