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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Physics of bunching and superbunching in superbunching pseudothermal light

Yifei Dong, Jianbin Liu, Zhuoran Xi, Huafan Zhang, Yunong Sun, Kuaikuai Yu, Yanyan Liu, Zhuo Xu

Published Jun 5, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Two-photon bunching and superbunching are important to understanding the physics of ghost imaging and second-order interference of light. With the help of the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light, the physics of bunching and superbunching in superbunching pseudothermal light is studied in detail. A special two-photon coincidence count detection system is designed to measure the required two-photon coincidence counts. It is concluded that the two-photon superbunching effect cannot be observed without taking the intensity changing process into account. A similar conclusion holds for two-photon bunching of thermal light. The conclusions are helpful for understanding of the physics of two-photon bunching and superbunching in intensity or photon number fluctuation correlation theory.

DOI
10.1364/josab.525586

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Two-photon bunching and superbunching are important to understanding the physics of ghost imaging and second-order interference of light. With the help of the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light, the physics of bunching and superbunching in superbunching pseudothermal light is studied in detail. A special two-photon coincidence count detection system is designed to measure the required two-photon coincidence counts. It is concluded that the two-photon superbunching effect cannot be observed without taking the intensity changing process into account. A similar conclusion holds for two-photon bunching of thermal light. The conclusions are helpful for understanding of the physics of two-photon bunching and superbunching in intensity or photon number fluctuation correlation theory.
Three-photon superbunching is experimentally observed with the recently proposed superbunching pseudothermal light. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that three-photon superbunching is observed with classical light in a linear optical system. From the quantum optics point of view, three-photon superbunching is interpreted as the result of constructive-destructive three-photon interference. The key to observe three-photon superbunching with superbunching pseudothermal light is that all the different ways to trigger a three-photon coincidence count are in principle indistinguishable, which is experimentally guaranteed by putting a pinhole before each rotating ground glass to ensure that all the passed photons are within the same coherence area. The observed three-photon superbunching is helpful to increase the visibility of ghost imaging and understand the physics of third-order interference of light.
Superbunching pseudothermal light has important applications in studying the second- and higher-order interference of light in quantum optics. Unlike the photon statistics of thermal or pseudothermal light is well understood, the photon statistics of superbunching pseudothermal light has not been studied yet. In this paper, we will employ single-photon detectors to measure the photon statistics of superbunching pseudothermal light and calculate the degree of second-order coherence. It is found that the larger the value of the degree of second-order coherence of superbunching pseudothermal light is, the more the measured photon distribution deviates from the one of thermal or pseudothermal light in the tail part. The results are helpful to understand the physics of two-photon superbunching with classical light. It is suggested that superbunching pseudothermal light can be employed to generate non-Rayleigh temporal speckles.
Two-photon superbunching of classical light is observed with single-mode continuous-wave laser light in a linear optical system. By adding more two-photon paths via rotating ground glasses, pinholes, lens, etc., g(2)(0)=7.10±0.07 is experimentally observed. The second-order temporal coherence function of the superbunching pseudothermal light is theoretically and experimentally studied in detail. It is predicted that the degree of coherence can be increased dramatically by adding more multi-photon paths. For instance, the degree of the second- and third-order coherence of the superbunching pseudothermal light with five rotating ground glasses can reach 32 and 7776, respectively. The results are helpful to understanding the physics of superbunching and improving the visibility of thermal light ghost imaging.
Thermal light by nature exhibits the well-known photon bunching effect with the zero-delay second-order correlation coefficient g(2){g}^{(2)}g(2) ideally equal to 2. The Photon extra-bunching effect, as a special class of the superbunching effect (g(2)>2{g}^{(2)}>2g(2)>2), describes the enhanced photon correlation (g(2)=3{g}^{(2)}=3g(2)=3) through the interference of bright twin beams produced in the spontaneous parametric down-conversion. In this work, we report that this effect can exist in classical beams and that g(2){g}^{(2)}g(2) can approach 4 in some extended extreme models. We experimentally demonstrate the nontrivial extra-bunching correlation ($\ensuremath{\sim}1.4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$ gain) in pairwise-generated holographic thermal light beams with a Dove prism-embedded balanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The interaction of such a pair of conjugated thermal light beams can generate a pair of uncorrelated superthermal light beams, enabling ghost imaging and Young's intensity interference with enhanced visibility. The quantum-inspired interference-induced spatial extra-bunching effect provides novel insights into inducing superbunching correlation in classical light and holds the potential for application in the coherent two-photon Lidar system to enhance sensitivity.
A simple superbunching pseudothermal light source is introduced based on common instruments such as laser, lenses, pinholes, and ground glasses. ${g}^{(2)}(0)=3.66\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02$ is observed in the suggested scheme by employing two rotating ground glasses. Quantum and classical theories are employed to interpret the observed superbunching effect. It is predicted that g(2)(0){g}^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0) can reach 2N{2}^{N}2N if NNN rotating ground glasses were employed. These results are helpful to understand the physics of superbunching. The proposed superbunching pseudothermal light may serve as a type of light to study the second- and higher-order coherence of light and have potential application in improving the visibility of thermal light ghost imaging.
Since Hanbury Brown and Twiss revealed the photon bunching effect of a thermal light source in 1956, almost all studies in correlation optics have been based on light’s intensity fluctuation, regardless of fact that the polarization fluctuation is a basic attribute of natural light. In this work, we uncover the veil of the polarization fluctuation and corresponding photon correlations by proposing a new light source model, termed pseudo-natural light, embodying both intensity and polarization fluctuations. Unexpectedly, the strong antibunching and superbunching effects can be simultaneously realized in such a new source, whose second-order correlation coefficient g ( 2 ) can be continuously modulated across 1. For the symmetric Bernoulli distribution of the polarization fluctuation, particularly, g ( 2 ) can be in principle from 0 to unlimitedly large. In pseudo-natural light, while the bunching effects of both intensity and polarization fluctuations enhance the bunching to superbunching photon correlation, the antibunching correlation of the polarization fluctuation can also be extracted through the procedure of division operation in the experiment. The antibunching effect and the combination with the bunching one will arouse new applications in quantum imaging. As heuristic examples, we carry out high-quality positive or negative ghost imaging, and devise high-efficiency polarization-sensitive and edge-enhanced imaging. This work, therefore, sheds light on the development of multiple and broad correlation functions for natural light.