Intensity and Phase Modulation of Laser Beams and Photon Count Distributions.

Iwao Kitazima

Ravinder Nath, Rupendra Kumar Sharma

Sebastian Fray, F. A. Johnson, Robin Jones +2 more

The first explicit experimental verification is given of Mandel's formula relating the photon-counting distribution of a radiation field to its intensity fluctuations. This was done by measuring the counting distributions obtained from a He-Ne gas-laser beam having superimposed square- and sine-wave modulations of various depths and frequencies.

Gabriel Bédard

Lee E. Estes, John D. Kuppenheimer, Lorenzo M. Narducci

A modified Michelson interferometer in which one of the mirrors is driven by a piezoelectric crystal connected to a Gaussian random-noise generator has been used to phase modulate a light beam from a Spectra Physics 119 model laser. The recombination of the modulated and the unmodulated beam reflected by a stationary prism generates a randomly varying interference pattern whose intensity distribution has been analyzed by means of a standard photon-counting technique. The experimental data agree with the theoretical semiclassical predictions in the range of linearity of the piezoelectric crystal. Deviations from the theory have been detected and correlated with the hysteresis of the crystal for large root-mean-square voltages applied to it.

K. Nath, Rupendra Kumar Sharma