Decompositions of thermal light into localized pulses are highly desirable. We introduce a decomposition of thermal light in a quasi-1D waveguide into sets of localized coherent pulses.
The relationship between thermal light and coherent pulses is of fundamental interest, and is also central to relating coherent optical experiments on photophysical processes to the natural occurrence of those processes in sunlight. We now know that thermal light cannot be represented as a statistical mixture of single pulses. In this paper we ask whether or not thermal light can be represented as a statistical mixture of sets of pulses. We consider thermal light in a one-dimensional waveguide, and find a convex decomposition into products of orthonormal coherent states of localized, nonmonochromatic modes.
We investigate the connection between thermal light and coherent pulses, constructing mixtures of single pulses that yield the same first-order, equal-space-point correlation function as thermal light. We present mixtures involving (i) pulses with a Gaussian line shape and narrow bandwidths and (ii) pulses with a coherence time that matches that of thermal light. We characterize the properties of the mixtures and pulses. Our results introduce an alternative description of thermal light in terms of multifrequency coherent states, valid for the description of broadband linear light-matter interactions. We anticipate our results will be relevant to time-resolved measurements that aim to probe the dynamics of systems as if they were excited by natural thermal light.