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Physical Review A

Statistical Properties of Randomly Modulated Laser Beams

B. Picinbono

Published Dec 1, 1971• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Results were recently reported on statistical properties of phase-modulated laser light. A detailed analysis is presented here of random-phase modulation. In particular it is shown that there are two kinds of such modulation: modulation by phase fluctuations, in which the instantaneous phase is a stationary stochastic process, and modulation by phase diffusion in which the phase is a diffusion process with an always increasing variance. In the case of a Gaussian modulation we show that the optical fields in the two preceding cases are very different, and we calculate their coherence functions. This difference can be detected by an interference experiment, but more easily by photon coincidence or intensity-correlation experiments on a beat between a reference beam and the modulated beams. We present a theoretical analysis of such experiments in the two cases of modulation.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.4.2398

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Results were recently reported on statistical properties of phase-modulated laser light. A detailed analysis is presented here of random-phase modulation. In particular it is shown that there are two kinds of such modulation: modulation by phase fluctuations, in which the instantaneous phase is a stationary stochastic process, and modulation by phase diffusion in which the phase is a diffusion process with an always increasing variance. In the case of a Gaussian modulation we show that the optical fields in the two preceding cases are very different, and we calculate their coherence functions. This difference can be detected by an interference experiment, but more easily by photon coincidence or intensity-correlation experiments on a beat between a reference beam and the modulated beams. We present a theoretical analysis of such experiments in the two cases of modulation.
A modified Michelson interferometer in which one of the mirrors is driven by a piezoelectric crystal connected to a Gaussian random-noise generator has been used to phase modulate a light beam from a Spectra Physics 119 model laser. The recombination of the modulated and the unmodulated beam reflected by a stationary prism generates a randomly varying interference pattern whose intensity distribution has been analyzed by means of a standard photon-counting technique. The experimental data agree with the theoretical semiclassical predictions in the range of linearity of the piezoelectric crystal. Deviations from the theory have been detected and correlated with the hysteresis of the crystal for large root-mean-square voltages applied to it.
The higher-order coherence functions of optical fields involving phase fluctuations have not yet been studied extensively. We discuss here an experiment which can in principle yield the fourth-order coherence function. This experiment is a study of the correlation function of the irradiance fluctuations obtained in some interference experiments. Two kinds of delay are then used: optical delays in the interferometer and electrical delays with suitable variations in the correlator.The results of the experiment are calculated theoretically with a particular statistical model of laser light. The possibility of using a spectrum analyzer instead of a correlator is discussed.
We report measurements of the absorption spectrum for two-photon absorption from a variety of randomly amplitude-modulated laser fields. The fields are generated by modulating the output of a stabilized tunable ring dye laser external to the laser cavity. As such, the field statistical properties are controllable and well characterized. The fields which we have used in this investigation include the real Gaussian field, the complex Gaussian field, and the real Gaussian field with a coherent component. For the last field, an interesting correlation effect is seen when the coherent component is in phase or 90\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} out of phase with the stochastic component. We have also investigated the effect of partial correlation of the two counterpropagating fields used in the measurements. In all cases we find excellent agreement between the measured absorption spectra and those calculated from the known fourth-order field-correlation functions.
This paper is concerned with the study of statistical properties of various optical fields obtained by several types of laser intensity modulation from the stationary random point process point of view. We essentially consider intensity correlations and time intervals distributions (TID). A generalization of the already known TID is given: It is the probability distribution (MTID) of the time interval between one photoelectron and the n th following photoelectron. Some theoretical and experimental results are presented in the general case (the time intervals considered are not necessarily small compared to the coherence time of the field). The modulation effect can be characterized by the photoelectron bunching effect. The TID and the MTID are significantly dependent upon the spectral profile of the field, if the used time scale is of the order of the coherence time. On the other hand, the MTID can be interpreted as the probability of the sum over time intervals between two successive photoelectrons. We treat two cases: If the variables of this sum are uncorrelated, we verify the central-limit theorem; if the variables are correlated we study the influence of the correlations when the number of summed variables becomes large.
The statistics of the optical phase of the light emitted by a semiconductor laser diode when subject to periodic modulation of the applied bias current are theoretically analyzed. Numerical simulations of the stochastic rate equations describing the previous system are performed to describe the temporal dependence of the phase statistics. These simulations are performed by considering two cases corresponding to random and deterministic initial conditions. In contrast to the Gaussian character of the phase that has been assumed in previous works, we show that the phase is not distributed as a Gaussian during the initial stages of evolution. We characterize the time it takes the phase to become Gaussian by calculating the dynamical evolution of the kurtosis coefficient of the phase. We show that, under the typical gain-switching with square-wave modulation used for quantum random number generation, quantity is in the ns time scale; that corresponds to the time it takes the system to lose the memory of the distribution of the initial conditions. We compare the standard deviation of the phase obtained with random and deterministic initial conditions to show that their differences become more important as the modulation speed is increased.
The paper contains a quantum theoretical analysis of laser beam fluctuations and of the light beat experiments with two lasers. With the help of experimental results on photon counting fluctuations in a single-mode laser field, some correlation properties of the field are derived. It is shown that the correlation equations are satisfied by states of the field which are much more general than "coherent" states. The equations lead directly to the spectral density of the intensity operator in the light beat experiments, which can be obtained from photoelectric measurements. The resulting expression is practically identical to that found by Forrester for light having thermal statistical properties. The reasons for this are discussed by a comparison of the corresponding probability distributions of photon counts and of the classical wave amplitude.