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中国科学通报：英文版

Photon statistics measurementby use of single photondetection

XlAOLiantuan, JIANGYuqiang, ZHAOYanting, YINWangbao, ZHAOJianming, JIASuotang

Published Jan 1, 2004• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The direct measurement of the Mandel para-meter of weak laser pulses, with 10 ns pulse duration timeand the mean number of photon per pulse h-being approxi-mately 0.1, is investigated by recording every photocountevent. With the Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection scheme,and not more than one photon per pulse being detected dur-ing the sample time by single-photon counters, we havefound that the single mode diode laser with driving currentlower than the threshold yields a sub-Poissonian statistics. Inaddition, when the diode laser driving current is muchhigher than the threshold, it is validated that the Mandelparameter Qc of the Poissonian coherent state is nearly-n/2. The experimental results are in good agreement withtheoretical prediction considering the measurement error.

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The direct measurement of the Mandel para-meter of weak laser pulses, with 10 ns pulse duration timeand the mean number of photon per pulse h-being approxi-mately 0.1, is investigated by recording every photocountevent. With the Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection scheme,and not more than one photon per pulse being detected dur-ing the sample time by single-photon counters, we havefound that the single mode diode laser with driving currentlower than the threshold yields a sub-Poissonian statistics. Inaddition, when the diode laser driving current is muchhigher than the threshold, it is validated that the Mandelparameter Qc of the Poissonian coherent state is nearly-n/2. The experimental results are in good agreement withtheoretical prediction considering the measurement error.
The direct measurement of the Mandel parameter of weak laser pulses, with 10 ns pulse duration time and the mean number of photon per pulse nˉ\bar nnˉ being approximately 0.1, is investigated by recording every photocount event. With the Hanbury Brown and Twiss detection scheme, and not more than one photon per pulse being detected during the sample time by single-photon counters, we have found that the single mode diode laser with driving current lower than the threshold yields a sub-Poissonian statistics. In addition, when the diode laser driving current is much higher than the threshold, it is validated that the Mandel parameterQ C of the Poissonian coherent state is nearly −nˉ/2 - \bar n/2−nˉ/2 . The experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical prediction considering the measurement error.
Faint laser pulses are practical signal sources in quantum key distribution. The photon statistics has been measured by recording every photo-counts moment and leading directly to the Mandel parameter of the photon distribution. Two different types operation of a single mode laser diode have been considered: either direct pulsing of the driving current or CW emission followed by pulse-shaping using an acousto-optic modulator. In both cases, it has been found that for practical attenuations, the photon distribution in each light pulse follows a poissonian statistics.
An efficient scheme for photon statistics measurement is presented based on the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss configuration. We set the sampling time Ts to satisfy the relationship of TslTdlTm, where Td is the dead time of each detector and Tm is the laser pulse repetition period. And each single photon detector cannot detect more than one photon in each pulse. The approach can sufficiently eliminate the influences of the detector's dead time on photon statistics. At last, the photon statistics of coherent field is experimentally determined.
We studied intensity fluctuations of a single photon source relying on the pulsed excitation of the fluorescence of a single molecule at room temperature. We directly measured the Mandel parameter Q(T) over 4 orders of magnitude of observation time scale T by recording every photocount. On time scale of a few excitation periods, sub-Poissonian statistics is clearly observed and the probablility of two-photons events is 10 times smaller than Poissonian pulses. On longer times, blinking in the fluorescence, due to the molecular triplet state, produces an excess of noise.
Photon anti-bunching, measured via the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss experiment, is one of the key signatures of quantum light and is tied to sub-Poissonian photon number statistics. Recently, it has been reported that photon anti-bunching or conditional sub-Poissonian photon number statistics can be obtained via second-order interference of mutually incoherent weak lasers and heralding based on photon counting [Phys. Rev. A92, 033855 (2015)10.1103/PhysRevA.92.033855; Opt. Express24, 19574 (2016)10.1364/OE.24.019574; https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.08161]. Here, we report theoretical analysis on the limits of manipulating conditional photon statistics via interference of weak lasers. It is shown that conditional photon number statistics can become super-Poissonian in such a scheme. We, however, demonstrate explicitly that it cannot become sub-Poissonian, i.e., photon anti-bunching cannot be obtained in such a scheme. We point out that incorrect results can be obtained if one does not properly account for seemingly negligible higher-order photon number expansions of the coherent state.
We prove that the photon-number distribution of an arbitrary single-mode optical state can be calculated directly from the phase-averaged quadrature amplitude distribution, measured using optical homodyne detection. We experimentally demonstrate the application of this result by measuring the ultrafast (subpicosecond), time-resolved photon-number statistics of a weak field from a pulsed diode laser. Also presented is a numerical calculation of the photon-number distribution of a quadrature-squeezed vacuum state.