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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Optical Dead Time Effects And Sub Poissonion Photo-Electron Counting Statistics

J.G. Walker, Eric Jakeman

Published Mar 27, 1985• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The use of dead time effects to generate sub-Poissonion photo-electron counting statistics is discussed. An experiment is described in which dead times are introduced using an optical shutter triggered by photo-detection events. Although the triggering photo-electron train is sub-Poissonion and antibunched, the light sampled by a second detector gives rise to a super-Poissonion and bunched train of photo-elecrons. A second experiment is proposed which would generate truly sub-Poisson light (ie detector independent). This is based on the use of optical dead times in parametric fluorescence.

DOI
10.1117/12.943710

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Journal of Modern Optics•Jun 1, 1987•2 citations
The use of dead time effects to generate sub-Poissonion photo-electron counting statistics is discussed. An experiment is described in which dead times are introduced using an optical shutter triggered by photo-detection events. Although the triggering photo-electron train is sub-Poissonion and antibunched, the light sampled by a second detector gives rise to a super-Poissonion and bunched train of photo-elecrons. A second experiment is proposed which would generate truly sub-Poisson light (ie detector independent). This is based on the use of optical dead times in parametric fluorescence.
A great deal of effort has been devoted during the last decade to the theory of nonclassical states of the radiation field. From a practical point of view some of the most interesting predictions of these theories concern the generation of light with sub-Poissonian photon counting statistics for which Such light is evidently less noisy than laser radiation with obvious implications for the improved performance of optical systems. When the temporal autocorrelation function of the photon counts increases as the delay time increases from zero the light is also said to be antibunched.
Sub-Poissonian photoelectron statistics have been produced by using the detection of down-converted photons in a trigger channel, having an electronic dead time, fed back to gate conjugate photoelectrons in a signal channel. With suitable choice of gate width and dead time a second factorial moment of the photo-electron count distribution as low as 0.4 has been achieved with considerable improvements in signal variance over equivalent Poisson sources. Suitable modification of the apparatus to produce sub-Poissonian photons rather than photoelectrons is described.
In parametric downconversion the quantum effects arise because two photons are created from one pump photon. Detection of photons in one train can be used to modify the quantum statistics of the other train to produce antibunched and/or sub-poissonian light. This chapter reports on two experiments of this type. The first employs single photon detection techniques and a fast optical shutter to create antibunched and slightly sub-poissonian light. The second uses analogue detection and feedback to produce sub-poissonian light at picowatt power levels with a Fano factor of 0.78 over a limited bandwidth. Sub-poissonian light is potentially useful in finite dose transmission measurements and the high degree of temporal coincidence of the downconverted photon pairs can be exploited in absolute measurement of detector quantum efficiency. The detailed shape of the fourth order interference effect can be related to the fourier transform of the photon bandwidth determined by the phase matching uncertainty and aperture size.
An optoelectronic device that can generate either the non-paralysable or the paralysable dead-time effect has been constructed using a feedback scheme in conjunction with the acousto-optic deflector. ‘Semi-classical’ experiments show good agreement with the theory, which predicts antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics. An expression for the correlation function of an arbitrary order is obtained for a general renewal process. From this general result, exact expressions for autocorrelation functions for both the non-paralysable and the paralysable counters are derived when the dead-time is greater than twice the sample time. The Fano factor is considered for both the non-paralysable and the paralysable counters. It is seen that the Fano factor for the paralysable counter can be smaller than that for the non-paralysable counter for a certain range of the input count rate.
Two novel methods of generating light with sub-Poissonian photon-counting statistics are described. Both methods are based on the use of parametric downconversion to generate two beams with simultaneously produced photons. By detecting the photons in one beam a knowledge of the time sequence of the photons in the other beam is obtained and used to modify the initially Poisson statistics. Expressions for the probability distribution functions of the two methods are derived and Fano factors are evaluated.