Spin correlations in a pair of atoms induced by spontaneous emission of photons

An analysis is presented of the state that arises after photons have been spontaneously emitted by a pair of spatially separated excited two-level atoms with spin-1/2 ground and excited states. Selection of possible decay scenarios conditioned on the helicities of the photons (even on the helicity of the one emitted first) makes it possible to reveal ground-state spin-projection correlations between atoms. The correlations are due to quantum interference between alternative scenarios (the atom that has emitted a particular photon cannot be identified). The correlations obtained by the chosen selection method are classical.