Photon counting statistics of laser light

Ren Fang Chang, Victor Korenman, Robert W. Detenbeck

Reeta Vyas, Surendra Singh

Roy S. Bondurant, Prem Kumar, Jeffrey H. Shapiro +1 more

We report measurement of the photon-counting distributions of nanosecond-duration light pulses. Photon counting is performed on light sources with widely different photon statistics, such as (1) a Q-switched Nd:YAG-laserpumped dye laser operating well above threshold and producing single-mode nanosecond pulses, (2) the same laser operating close to threshold, and (3) a rotating ground-glass aberrator illuminated by the laser pulses of case (1). The method is particularly suitable for the investigation of the statistics of light generated by the nonlinear interaction of radiation with matter.

C. W. J. Beenakker

Muhammad Suhail Zubairy

Manabu Yoshikawa, Norihito Suzuki, Tatsuro Suzuki

The photon counting statistics of light is studied, in which the various types of photon counting distribution can be represented by Nakagami'sm-distribution. To investigate this theoretical utility we have measured the photon counting distribution of laser light scattered by a very dilute solution in which non-Gaussian statistics appear. The comparison is also made by the factrial moment between the experimental value and theoretical one. The experimental distribution is in agreement with the theoretical distribution.