Waiting-time probabilities for detecting the nth photon, given that counting commenced at the detection of a photon, for stationary classical and quantum sources are studied and compared with unconditional waiting-time probabilities.
Wait-time distributions for the nth photodetection at a detector illuminated by a stationary light beam are studied. Both unconditional measurements, initiated at an arbitrary instant, and conditional measurements, initiated upon a photodetection, are considered. Simple analytic expressions are presented for several classical and quantum sources of light and are used to quantify and compare photon sequences generated by them. These distributions can be measured in photon-counting experiments and are useful in characterizing and generating photon sequences with prescribed statistics. The effects of nonunit detection efficiency are also discussed, and curves are presented to illustrate the behavior.