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arXiv:1806.07458

Photon statistics of amplified spontaneous emission

Iliya V. Doronin, Evgenii S. Andrianov, A. A. Zyablovsky, Александр Александрович Пухов, Yu. E. Lozovik, Vinogradov, A. P., Alexander A. Lisyansky

Published Jun 19, 2018• 0 citations
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Abstract

Developments in quantum technologies lead to new applications that require radiation sources with specific photon statistics. A widely used Poissonian statistics are easily produced by lasers; however, some applications require super- or sub-Poissonian statistics. Statistical properties of a light source are characterized by the second-order coherence function g^(2)(0). This function distinguishes stimulated radiation of lasers with g^(2)(0)=1 from light of other sources. For example, g^(2)(0)=2 for black-body radiation, and g^(2)(0)=0 for single-photon emission. One of the applications requiring super-Poissonian statistics (g^(2)(0)>1) is ghost imaging with thermal light. Ghost imaging also requires light with a narrow linewidth and high intensity. Currently, rather expensive and inefficient light sources are used for this purpose. In the last year, a superluminescent diode based on amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) has been considered as a new light source for ghost imaging. Even though ASE has been widely studied, its photon statistics has not been settled - there are neither reliable theoretical estimates of the second-order coherence function nor unambiguous experimental data. Our computer simulation clearly establishes that coherence properties of light produced by ASE are similar to that of a thermal source with g^(2)(0)=2 independent of pump power. This result manifests the fundamental difference between ASE and laser radiation.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1806.07458

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Developments in quantum technologies lead to new applications that require radiation sources with specific photon statistics. A widely used Poissonian statistics are easily produced by lasers; however, some applications require super- or sub-Poissonian statistics. Statistical properties of a light source are characterized by the second-order coherence function g^(2)(0). This function distinguishes stimulated radiation of lasers with g^(2)(0)=1 from light of other sources. For example, g^(2)(0)=2 for black-body radiation, and g^(2)(0)=0 for single-photon emission. One of the applications requiring super-Poissonian statistics (g^(2)(0)>1) is ghost imaging with thermal light. Ghost imaging also requires light with a narrow linewidth and high intensity. Currently, rather expensive and inefficient light sources are used for this purpose. In the last year, a superluminescent diode based on amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) has been considered as a new light source for ghost imaging. Even though ASE has been widely studied, its photon statistics has not been settled - there are neither reliable theoretical estimates of the second-order coherence function nor unambiguous experimental data. Our computer simulation clearly establishes that coherence properties of light produced by ASE are similar to that of a thermal source with g^(2)(0)=2 independent of pump power. This result manifests the fundamental difference between ASE and laser radiation.
Properties of light sources based on amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) are similar to the properties of lasers in many regards. However, even though ASE has been widely studied, its photon statistics have not been settled. There are no reliable theoretical estimates or unambiguous experimental data for the second-order coherence function of photons that characterizes the coherence properties of a light source. Our computer simulation clearly establishes that, independently of pump power, the light produced by ASE is similar to that of a thermal source. This result lays bare the fundamental difference between ASE radiation and laser radiation.
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We examine the coherence properties of stationary light obtained by the superposition of nonstationary independent emissions occurring at random space–time points. The positions of the points are independent and uniformly distributed over the volume of the source. The emission times fluctuate in accordance with a stationary renewal point process. This process admits of super-Poisson, sub-Poisson, or Poisson behavior. The individual emissions are assumed to be in a coherent, chaotic, or n state. The statistical nature of the random-emission space–time points plays an important role in determining the coherence properties and photon statistics of the total field. This is manifested in the normalized second-order correlation function, which turns out to have the usual form for chaotic light with two additional terms. The first of these is determined by the statistical nature of the individual emissions (it is positive for coherent or chaotic, but zero for single-photon, emissions). The second term is governed by the statistics of the primary excitations (it is positive for super-Poisson, zero for Poisson, and negative for sub-Poisson excitations). Both additional terms become small for light with a high degeneracy parameter (many total photons per emission lifetime). The behavior of the light is then asymptotically chaotic. In the opposite limit, when the degeneracy parameter is small (or the emissions are instantaneous), the correlation properties of the primary excitations are directly transferred to the correlation properties of the photons. The first-order spatial-coherence properties of the field turn out to be identical with those of chaotic light (i.e., the van Cittert–Zernike theorem is obeyed), although the second-order properties differ. The photon-counting distribution reflects the character of the correlation function. Thus sub-Poisson primary excitations, together with n-state emissions, can lead to sub-Poisson photon counts under certain conditions. Such nonclassical light may be made arbitrarily intense if interference effects are eliminated by detecting many spatial modes. As an example of our theory, we cite a Franck–Hertz experiment excited by a space-charge-limited electron beam. If the electron excitations are represented as a sub-Poisson renewal point process, and the photon emissions as one-photon states, the light generated should be antibunched and sub-Poisson.
We analyze the statistics of photons originating from amplified spontaneous emission generated by a quantum dot superluminescent diode.Experimentally detectable emission properties are taken into account by parametrizing the corresponding quantum state as a multimode phase-randomized Gaussian density operator.The validity of this model is proven in two subsequent experiments using fast two-photon-absorption detection observing second-order equal-time and second-order fully time-resolved intensity correlations on femtosecond timescales.In the first experiment, we study the photon statistics when the number of contributing longitudinal modes is systematically reduced by applying well-controlled optical feedback.In a second experiment, we add coherent light from a single-mode laser diode to quantum dot superluminescent diode broadband radiation.Tuning the power ratio, we realize tailored second-order correlations ranging from Gaussian to Poissonian statistics.Both experiments are very well matched by theory, thus giving first insights into the quantum properties of radiation from quantum dot superluminescent diodes.