Abstract

The first experimental verification of the Tersoff-Bayer interstatistics transition theory has been reported.¹-³ A novel difference photon-counting method of detection, which reveals the field's particle fluctuations, is used to gain information on the beam splitting process of a highly Bose degenerate chaotic (and coherent) photon beam emitted from an ultrastable He-Ne laser. The splitting device consists of an electrooptic Pockels cell which acts as a stationary beam splitter or a chaotic beam splitter depending on the output properties of a driving noise generator. We found that the quantum Bose statistics in a splitting (i.e., scattering) process corresponds to a fully stochastic splitting process. This conclusion has been experimentally verified for two-way splitting and for general multichannel scattering induced by microscopic particles.

© 1989 Optical Society of America