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I have been trying to understand interference of photons.

I used to think of a photon like a localized wave, with an electric and magnetic field travelling perpendicular to each other, each possessing peaks and troughs, flying through the air. If it encouters another photon travelling in the opposite direction, and with opposite peaks and troughs, they will destructively interfere to produce *nothing, just like the classical analogy of water waves.

However I now understand that in the quantum world, interference of photons can only be accurately described via probability distributions and path integrals, and that they do not 'collide' or 'touch' in the classical sense we are used to.

If I use a beamsplitter to produce a single photon, with some phase, travelling along a specific path and I introduce another photon with another beamsplitter, but exactly out of phase with the first, and travelling along the exact same path as the first, but in the opposite direction, what would happen to them? (these photons have same polarization, temporal mode, frequency etc).

DiracPretender
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    Re, "...destructively interfere to produce nothing." Waves generally pass through each other without interacting. When two wave trains having the same frequency pass through each other, there will be a stationary pattern of nodes and anti-nodes (a.k.a., an "interference pattern"), and if you place a detector exactly at one of the nodes, it will not be able to detect (steal energy from) either wave. But that does not mean that the waves have destroyed each other. They pass through each other and keep going. – Solomon Slow Feb 28 '21 at 20:15
  • Where is the double slit in your question? For the part about destructive interference, check out this question and the various different explanations in the answers: What happens to the energy when waves perfectly cancel each other? – A. P. Feb 28 '21 at 20:49

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