Enhancement of Photon-Bunching Effects

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Abstract
An analysis is presented which shows that photon‐bunching effects in a spatially coherent noise field can be enhanced by the superposition of a monochromatic coherent ``signal'' and/or by shaping the spectrum of the incident noise. For a Lorentz spectral shape, the addition of ``signal'' to noise is shown to increase bunching effects by a factor no greater than 4. By changing the noise spectrum from a Lorentz to a rectangular shape, bunching effects are shown to increase by a factor of 2 despite the fact that total incident noise power decreases. In all cases, the ratio of bunching noise to shot noise is proportional to the average number of detected noise photons per cycle of noise bandwidth. For the specific problem analyzed, the maximum value of the ratio of bunching noise to shot noise is determined. In the absence of ``signal,'' the results are found to agree with the exact distribution of Bèdard.