We report an experiment to test quantum interference, entanglement and nonlocality using two dissimilar photon sources, the Sun and a semiconductor quantum dot on the Earth, which are separated by ~150 million kilometers. By making the otherwise vastly distinct photons indistinguishable in all degrees of freedom, we observe time-resolved two-photon quantum interference with a raw visibility of 0.796(17), well above the 0.5 classical limit, providing the first evidence of quantum nature of thermal light. Further, using the photons with no common history, we demonstrate post-selected two-photon entanglement with a state fidelity of 0.826(24), and a violation of Bell's inequality by 2.20(6). The experiment can be further extended to a larger scale using photons from distant stars, and open a new route to quantum optics experiments at an astronomical scale.Can any two photons in the Universe, no matter how distantly and independently they originate from, show quantum interference and entanglement? According to quantum theory, when two quantum-mechanically indistinguishable single photons impinge upon a 50/50 beam splitter, they bunch together out of the same output port due to bosonic statistics. The classical picture of electromagnetic fields failed in understanding the interference of two photons from independent sources with a visibility better than 50% 1-4 , which can be explained by quantum interference of the probability amplitudes of the twophoton events 5 . This effect, also known as Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) two-photon interference 6 , poses a strong conceptual challenge to the celebrated statement by Dirac that "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference between different photons never occurs" 7 .

We present a technique that improves the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of range-finding, sensing, and other light-detection applications. The technique filters out low photon numbers using photonnumber-resolving detectors (PNRDs). This technique has no classical analog and cannot be done with classical detectors. We investigate the properties of our technique and show under what conditions the scheme surpasses the classical SNR. Finally, we simulate the operation of a rangefinder, showing improvement with a low number of signal samplings and confirming the theory with a high number of signal samplings.Introduction.-Electromagnetic radiation is regularly used for measuring and sensing the physical world. One particular sensing method, namely, laser range-finding and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is under continuous development. Increasing the range requires sensitive detectors, and more recently, single-photon detectors (SPDs) [1][2][3][4], and photon-number-resolving detectors (PNRDs) [5,6] have been used for this purpose.

We theoretically study the phase sensitivity of an SU(1,1) interferometer with a thermal state and a squeezed vacuum state as inputs and parity detection as the measurement. We find that the phase sensitivity can beat the shot-noise limit and approaches the Heisenberg limit, with increasing input photon number, in an ideal situation. We also consider the effect of various noises, including photon loss, dark counts, and thermal photon noise. Our results show that the phase sensitivity is below the shot-noise limit with photon loss and dark counts, but cannot beat the shot-noise limit in the presence of thermal noise.

We present a technique for squeezed light detection based on direct imaging of the displacedsqueezed-vacuum state using a CCD camera. We show that the squeezing parameter can be accurately estimated using only the first two moments of the recorded pixel-to-pixel photon fluctuation statistics, with accuracy that rivals that of the standard squeezing detection methods such as a balanced homodyne detection. Finally, we numerically simulate the camera operation, reproducing the noisy experimental results with low signal samplings and confirming the theory with high signal samplings.

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