We demonstrate deterministic control over the photon-number distribution by interfering two coherent beams within a disordered photonic lattice. By sweeping a relative phase between two equal-amplitude coherent fields with Poissonian statistics that excite adjacent sites in a lattice endowed with disorder-immune chiral symmetry, we measure an output photon-number distribution that changes periodically between super-thermal and sub-thermal photon statistics upon ensemble averaging. Thus, the photon-bunching level is controlled interferometrically at a fixed mean photon-number by gradually activating the excitation symmetry of the chiral-mode pairs with structured coherent illumination and without modifying the disorder level of the random system itself.
@article{arxiv.1706.08243,
title = {Interferometric control of the photon-number distribution},
author = {H. Esat Kondakci and Alexander Szameit and Ayman F. Abouraddy and Demetrios N. Christodoulides and Bahaa E. A. Saleh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.08243},
year = {2018}
}