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Soviet Journal of Quantum Electronics

Photon antibunching of resonance fluorescence radiation from an atomic beam with a fluctuating number of atoms

M. Schubert, K.‐E. Süsse, W Vogel, D.‐G. Welsch, B. Wilhelmi

Published Mar 31, 1982• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The applicability of several photon antibunching criteria to transient optical fields is studied. The results are used to investigate resonance fluorescence from an atomic beam with a fluctuating number of atoms. It is shown that photon antibunching is observed provided that the average number of atoms and the background noise are sufficiently low.

DOI
10.1070/qe1982v012n03abeh012092

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The applicability of several photon antibunching criteria to transient optical fields is studied. The results are used to investigate resonance fluorescence from an atomic beam with a fluctuating number of atoms. It is shown that photon antibunching is observed provided that the average number of atoms and the background noise are sufficiently low.
The experimental conditions under which the intensity correlation function from a single atom undergoing resonance fluorescence may be observed are studied. As was pointed out by Jakeman et al. (1977), even under optimum conditions the number of fluctuations in the atomic beam prevent a direct observation of photon antibunching under the subsequent normalisation scheme used by Kimble et al. (1977). However, a direct observation of photon antibunching is possible in principle by adopting alternative normalisation schemes of the intensity correlation function.
We report on the observation of photon antibunching in the resonance fluorescence field radiated by a many-atom source. The crucial feature of our experiment is the achievement of a phasematching configuration similar to that of four-wave mixing. The antibunching term results from a constructive interference of contributions from the NNN atoms and thus scales as N2{N}^{2}N2.
A review is given of recent theoretical studies devoted to the problem of generating radiation fields that exhibit the opposite of the well-known bunching of photons observed in light from thermal sources, the so-called antibunching effect. It is made clear that this phenomenon reflects the corpuscular nature of light and, hence, cannot be interpreted in terms of classical electrodynamics, needing, instead, the quantum-mechanical formalism for its description. It is shown in some detail that nonlinear interaction mechanisms like multiphoton absorption and parametric three-wave interaction are suited to change the photon statistical properties of incident (in most cases coherent) light such that the output field will be endowed with antibunching properties. Special emphasis is given to the problem of correctly specifying the dimensions of the mode volume occurring in the usual single-mode treatment of the field, which is, in fact, of great practical interest, since the magnitude of the antibunching effect is determined by the inverse average number of photons contained in that volume. In a later section it is pointed out that destructive interference with a coherent reference beam provides a means of (a) effectively enhancing photon antibunching that is already present in a high-intensity field, through reduction of the intensity, and (b) transforming phase fluctuations produced in a Kerr medium into antibunching-type intensity fluctuations. On the other hand, there exists a way of directly generating light with antibunching properties, the physical mechanism being resonance fluorescence from a single atom. The main features of this technique, both theoretical and experimental, are outlined, including a discussion of the first experimental results obtained a few years ago.