Photon correlations in a multiple coherent and overlapping chaotic radiation field

Y. Q. Li, Y. Z. Wang

Ladislav Mišta, Jan Peřina, Z. Braunerová

Yu Zhou, Jason Simon, Jianbin Liu +1 more

In a near-field three-photon correlation measurement, we observed the third-order temporal and spatial correlation functions of chaotic thermal light in the single-photon counting regime. In the study, we found that the probability of jointly detecting three randomly radiated photons from a chaotic thermal source by three individual detectors is $6$ times greater if the photodetection events fall in the coherence time and coherence area of the radiation field than if they do not. From the viewpoint of quantum mechanics, the observed phenomenon is the result of three-photon interference. By making use of this property, we measured the three-photon thermal light lensless ghost image of a double spot and achieved higher visibility compared with the two-photon thermal light ghost image.

P. Lambropoulos, Chihiro Kikuchi, R. K. Osborn

A kinetic theory of the two-photon absorption from a single mode of the radiation field is presented. It is found that, in general, the rate of two-photon absorption depends on certain correlation functions, and hence on the coherence properties, of the field. The results are applied to the case of a pure coherent state and the case of a chaotic field.

Edward M. Purcell

Bahaa E. A. Saleh, David Stoler, Malvin Carl Teich

We examine the coherence properties and photon statistics of stationary light obtained by the superposition of nonstationary emissions occurring at random times, in accordance with a homogeneous Poisson point process. The individual emissions are assumed to be in a coherent, chaotic, or $n$ state. The statistical nature of the emission times results in fluctuations of the relative contributions of different emissions at a given time. This is manifested by an additional positive term, exhibiting particlelike properties, in the normalized second-order correlation function. Thus, the photon-counting variance is increased. For coherent emissions, interference between the randomly delayed emissions produces additional wavelike noise. In the limit when the emissions overlap strongly, the field exhibits the correlation properties of chaotic light, regardless of the statistics of the individual emissions. In the opposite limit, when emissions seldom overlap, the light intensity is describable by a shot-noise stochastic process, and the detected photocounts show an enhanced particlelike noise, which has its largest value when the counting time is long. In that limit, the photocounts obey the Neyman type-$A$ and generalized Polya-Aeppli distributions, when the individual emissions are coherent and chaotic, respectively. When the individual emissions correspond to the $n$ state, the Poisson emission times result in bunching which reduces or eliminates the inherent antibunching associated with the $n$ state.