Statistical properties of intensity-modulated coherent radiation. Theoretical and experimental aspects

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the study of statistical properties of various optical fields obtained by several types of laser intensity modulation from the stationary random point process point of view. We essentially consider intensity correlations and time intervals distributions (TID). A generalization of the already known TID is given: It is the probability distribution (MTID) of the time interval between one photoelectron and the n th following photoelectron. Some theoretical and experimental results are presented in the general case (the time intervals considered are not necessarily small compared to the coherence time of the field). The modulation effect can be characterized by the photoelectron bunching effect. The TID and the MTID are significantly dependent upon the spectral profile of the field, if the used time scale is of the order of the coherence time. On the other hand, the MTID can be interpreted as the probability of the sum over time intervals between two successive photoelectrons. We treat two cases: If the variables of this sum are uncorrelated, we verify the central‐limit theorem; if the variables are correlated we study the influence of the correlations when the number of summed variables becomes large.