Experimental reconstructions of photon number distributions of both continuous-wave and pulsed light beams are reported. Our scheme is based on on/off avalanche photodetection assisted by maximum-likelihood estimation and does not involve photon counting. Reconstructions of the distribution for both semiclassical and quantum states of light are reported for single-mode as well as for multimode beams.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0502060,
title = {Experimental reconstruction of photon statistics without photon counting},
author = {M. Bondani and G. Zambra and A. Andreoni and M. Gramegna and M. Genovese and G. Brida and A. Rossi and M. G. A. Paris},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0502060},
year = {2009}
}