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Photon statistics

So my colleague was off seeing a diamond nitrogen vacancies lab,

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(I haven't read it...) At the single photon end, you can use a confocal microscope, (with pin hole) to watch one atom, and see that there is 'dead spot' for ~10-20 ns(?) (as the atom/vacancy get's re-pumped by the light source.)

That seems like a lot of work/expense to find a non-ideal source, and we got to talking about photon statistics.

You've got Hanbury Brown, which I tried to measure once, but made an error in my set-up.. maybe again some day, but it's damn hard to see 'photon bunching'... (George thinks about a rubidium lamp, pin hole and single photon detector...? and various filters.)

Anyway I was thinking of non-ideal light sources, Non-ideal, but fundamental.. not just a noisy laser. (or clouds going in front of the sun.) There are these labs that use a moving diffusior and laser speckle pattern to make noise.. but it's sorta man made. (you can change the diffusor speed, which changes the noise spectrum, so at least it has a knob.)

I once looked at the noise of a diode laser right near threshold; it looked noisier, but it was dang tweaky to keep the laser 'near' ... some FB loop that looked at the noise?

Other ideas?

George H.

Reply to
George Herold
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You can make anticorrelated shot noise by wiring two very efficient LEDs (or maybe diode lasers) in parallel and running them off a sub-Poissonian current source.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
pcdhobbs

I supose you need to colect all or most of the light from each LED. Easier with lasers...

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Reply to
Winfield Hill

You can plot the anticorrelations even with quite a bit of loss.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

That's an interesting and somewhat subtle question. At bottom a photon is an elementary excitation of the EM field with certain boundary conditions--in other words, it's not a thing, it's a property of something else.

However, like drops from a faucet, you can count them.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

According to a reliable source, there is no such thing as a photon.

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Reply to
Robert Baer

There are no things. Just processes. I suppose they take place in a thing, so yeah, there's one thing. Just one.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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