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Physical Review A

Two-photon correlations in light from a gain tube

D. B. Scarl, S. R. Smith

Published Dec 1, 1976• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A recent measurement of the two-photon counting rate in amplified spontaneous emission showed no time correlations that could be uniquely attributed to stimulated emission. It has been argued that the observed Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations are associated with the process of stimulated emission. The experimental results can be interpreted in a way that more closely parallels the explanations of other experiments by avoiding specific recourse to stimulated emission as a cause of correlations.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.14.2355

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A recent measurement of the two-photon counting rate in amplified spontaneous emission showed no time correlations that could be uniquely attributed to stimulated emission. It has been argued that the observed Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations are associated with the process of stimulated emission. The experimental results can be interpreted in a way that more closely parallels the explanations of other experiments by avoiding specific recourse to stimulated emission as a cause of correlations.
We have measured antinormally ordered Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations for coherent states of the electromagnetic field by using a stimulated parametric down-conversion process. Photons were detected by stimulated emission, rather than by absorption, so that the detection responded not only to actual photons but also to zero-point fluctuations via spontaneous emission. The observed correlations were distinct from normally ordered ones as they showed excess positive correlations, i.e., photon bunching effects, which arose from the thermal nature of zero-point fluctuations.
Recently, the question of the origin of correlations in thermal light has again been debated. The alternative viewpoints suggest that (i) stimulated emission causes the correlations implied by Bose-Einstein statistics and exemplified by the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect, or (ii) stimulated emission coherently amplifies any initial field, with no change in the nature of photon statistics, apart from the addition of, and interference with, spontaneous-emission noise. It is shown that two essentially different physical models have been considered previously, with many results being only approximate. For these models we obtain the evolution of the photon statistics by deriving exactly the generating function for the diagonal elements of the field density matrix and the quantum characteristic function. The source of Bose-Einstein correlations is seen to be merely the interference in the superposition of random independent fields from a chaotic source, spontaneous emission being one example. Extending the investigation to a nonlinear model, we show that, although there is no longer coherent amplification, it is still not correct to infer that this interaction, which produces the amplification, also leads to Bose-Einstein statistics.
Assertions that stimulated emission may cause photon correlations (or, properly, photocount correlations) are discussed. A particular association of terms in the density matrix rate equation for first order, linear, interactions is urged, following the literature of maser amplifiers. With this association of terms, a consistent picture results in which stimulated emission amplifies without altering the statistical character of an incident field. Spontaneous emission generates excess correlations, through its interference with the incident field. Objections to Webb's thermodynamic argument for an association between stimulated emission and the occurrence of photon correlations are also discussed.
The authors have measured the two-photon correlation function in 632.8-nm single-mode He-Ne laser light which had been amplified by stimulated emission in a long He-Ne discharge tube. For laser light intensities which were comparable with the discharge-tube spontaneous-emission intensity into a single mode, the measured correlations agree well with those predicted for a simple mixture of laser and chaotic light. The results are consistent with the assumption that laser light linearly amplified by stimulated emission has the same statistical properties as unamplified laser light.