  Multi-photon processes are the essence of nonlinear optics. Optical harmonics
generation and multi-photon absorption, ionization, polymerization or
spectroscopy are widely used in practical applications. Generally, the rate of
an n-photon effect scales as the n-th order autocorrelation function of the
incident light, which is high for light with strong photon-number fluctuations.
Therefore `noisy' light sources are much more efficient for multi-photon
effects than coherent sources with the same mean power, pulse duration and
repetition rate. Here we generate optical harmonics of order 2-4 from bright
squeezed vacuum (BSV), a state of light consisting of only quantum noise with
no coherent component. We observe up to two orders of magnitude enhancement in
the generation of optical harmonics due to ultrafast photon-number
fluctuations. This feature is especially important for the nonlinear optics of
fragile structures where the use of a `noisy' pump can considerably increase
the effect without overcoming the damage threshold.
