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arXiv:quant-ph/0409210 · Physical Review A

Experimental study of the momentum correlation of a pseudothermal field in the photon-counting regime

Giuliano Scarcelli, Alejandra Valencia, Yanhua H. Shih

Published Nov 12, 2004• 68 citations
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Abstract

Thermal (or pseudothermal) radiation has been recently proposed for imaging and interference types of experiments to simulate entangled states. We report an experimental study on the momentum correlation properties of a pseudothermal field in the photon counting regime. The characterization and understanding of such a light source in the context of two-photon physics, especially its similarities and differences compared to entangled two-photon states, is useful in gaining knowledge of entanglement and may help us to assess the real potential of applications of chaotic light in this context.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.70.051802

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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.
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