Photon-counting with slowly modulated light beams

J. Lyons, GORDON J. TROUP

John D. Kuppenheimer

Neil J. Savage

M. Á. Rebolledo, J. M. Alvarez, Julio Cesar Amare

Theoretical expressions for the factorial moments of the triggered photon-counting distribution that corresponds to a light beam with a periodically modulated intensity are derived. Two triggering procedures are considered: the time-window triggering procedure (which has been experimentally checked for Gaussian light by other authors) and the first-photopulse triggering procedure (which is a faster procedure). The theoretical expressions that correspond to the latter procedure are experimentally checked in this paper by using a square-wave signal. The errors involved in the analysis of the information contained in the light beam, when this information is obtained from the measurement of the first-order factorial moment, are studied.

Sebastian Fray, F. A. Johnson, Robin Jones +2 more

The first explicit experimental verification is given of Mandel's formula relating the photon-counting distribution of a radiation field to its intensity fluctuations. This was done by measuring the counting distributions obtained from a He-Ne gas-laser beam having superimposed square- and sine-wave modulations of various depths and frequencies.

Robert H. Hadfield