Unlike in C, PHP references are not treated as pre-dereferenced pointers, but as complete aliases.
The data that they are aliasing ("referencing") will not become available for garbage collection until all references to it have been removed.
"Regular" variables are themselves considered references, and are not treated differently from variables assigned using =& for the purposes of garbage collection.
The following examples are provided for clarification.
1) When treated as a variable containing a value, references behave as expected. However, they are in fact objects that *reference* the original data.
<?php
$var = "foo";
$ref1 =& $var; // new object that references $var
$ref2 =& $ref1; // references $var directly, not $ref1!!!!!
echo $ref1; // >foo
unset($ref1);
echo $ref1; // >Notice: Undefined variable: ref1
echo $ref2; // >foo
echo $var; // >foo
?>
2) When accessed via reference, the original data will not be removed until *all* references to it have been removed. This includes both references and "regular" variables assigned without the & operator, and there are no distinctions made between the two for the purpose of garbage collection.
<?php
$var = "foo";
$ref =& $var;
unset($var);
echo $var; // >Notice: Undefined variable: var
echo $ref; // >foo
?>
3) To remove the original data without removing all references to it, simply set it to null.
<?php
$var = "foo";
$ref =& $var;
$ref = NULL;
echo $var; // Value is NULL, so nothing prints
echo $ref; // Value is NULL, so nothing prints
?>
4) Placing data in an array also counts as adding one more reference to it, for the purposes of garbage collection.
For more info, see http://php.net/manual/en/features.gc.refcounting-basics.php