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Physics Bulletin

On Radiation Statistics

GORDON J. TROUP

Published Jul 1, 1965• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In 1956, Hanbury Brown and Twiss performed their famous intensity-correlation experiment with two 'coherent' beams of light from a thermal source. They argued that such intensity-correlation must entail an excess of photon arrival-time coincidences over chance ones for the two beams, and went on (with Little) to demonstrate this in an experiment (Twiss, Little and Hanbury Brown 1957). About the same time, Brannen and Ferguson (1956) performed a photon-coincidence experiment with coherent thermal light, and obtained a null result (due to lack of sensitivity).

DOI
10.1088/0031-9112/16/7/001

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In 1956, Hanbury Brown and Twiss performed their famous intensity-correlation experiment with two 'coherent' beams of light from a thermal source. They argued that such intensity-correlation must entail an excess of photon arrival-time coincidences over chance ones for the two beams, and went on (with Little) to demonstrate this in an experiment (Twiss, Little and Hanbury Brown 1957). About the same time, Brannen and Ferguson (1956) performed a photon-coincidence experiment with coherent thermal light, and obtained a null result (due to lack of sensitivity).
Synopsis After the detection of correlations in two coherent light beams by Hanbury Brown and Twiss, objections were raised by Brannen and Ferguson on the basis of the experiments of Adam, Janossy and Varga and their own experiments in which no correlations were detected. It is pointed out here that the different groups were looking for two entirely different effects, one being quadratic, the other one linear in the number of photons involved; the quadratic effect (discovered by Hanbury Brown and Twiss) is in agreement with quantum theory while the linear effect is not. It was shown by Purcell and by Hanbury Brown and Twiss that the choice of parameters in the experiments which gave negative results was inadequate to show the quadratic effect. It is shown in this paper that their experiments were also inadequate to decide between the existence or nonexistence of the linear effect.
In quantum mechanics it is possible to pack an arbitrary number of bosons into the same quantum state. The maximum occupancy for fermions, however is one. Back in 1956 two British scientists, Hanbury Brown and Twiss, conducted a classic experiment that showed that photons, a type of boson, have a tendency to bunch into clusters. Their experiment comprised two light sources and two detectors set up to measure the light that was transmitted and reflected by a beam splitter at the centre of the experimental configuration (see figure a). The bunching was observed by measuring the intensity correlation between the two coherent beams of light as a function of time. Hanbury Brown and Twiss measured the likelihood of observing a fluctuation in one detector at a particular time when a signal was detected at an earlier time in the other detector. The positive correlation they found was consistent with the bunching property of bosons.
In the 1950s, Hanbury Brown and Twiss developed a novel way to measure the size of stars by studying the coherence of the light they emit. These intensity correlations, at the time obtained from an incoherent thermal source of radiation, were the source of confusion at first but ended up initiating an entire new field of physics: the discipline of quantum optics. In his Perspective, [Knight][1] discusses results reported in the same issue by [ Schellekens et al. ][2] in which these same correlation effects have been seen in cold atomic gases, giving rise to intensity correlations of matter waves. The findings suggest a host of new opportunities in this field of quantum atom optics. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/631 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/310/5748/648
An intensity-correlation experiment is proposed to test the second-order coherence of laser light from a cw-operated laser based on the Glauber formalism. The calculation utilizes the known form of the density matrix for radiation from a randomly excited source such as a discharge tube which is equivalent to filtered black-body radiation, and represents the laser radiation field by a coherent state. The intensity correlation calculated exhibits the standard Hanbury Brown-Twiss term and an extra term due to intensity interference between the Fourier components of the thermal field and the laser mode.