High-order photon correlations through double Hanbury Brown-Twiss measurements

摘要

We present an experimental technique that can accurately measure the high-order photon correlations of various light fields based on double Hanbury Brown-Twiss scheme. The system consists of four conventional binary response single-photon counting modules which are non-photon-number-resolving detectors. We theoretically analyze the effects of the experimental conditions on the high-order photon correlations of coherent, chaotic thermal, Fock and squeezed vacuum states with considering the overall efficiency and background noise. In experiment, we determine the proper resolution time from 2(9) = 512 ns to 2(11) = 2048 ns and counting rate from 10 kc s(-1)to 100 kc s(-1)for characterizing the exact second-, third- and fourth-order photon correlations of chaotic thermal state. At complete time delays, we also observe the third- and fourth-order photon correlations of chaotic thermal state, with the maximum high-order correlation values of 5.99 +/- 0.02 and 23.9 +/- 0.2 respectively, which are in good agreement with the theoretical values of 6 and 24. The demonstrated experimental technique with high accuracy is a promising tool for investigating quantum optical coherence and ghost imaging.