Thermal light cannot be represented as a statistical mixture of single pulses
Quantum Physics
2016-12-06 v3
Abstract
We ask whether or not thermal light can be represented as a mixture of single broadband coherent pulses. We find that it cannot. Such a mixture is simply not rich enough to mimic thermal light; indeed, it cannot even reproduce the first-order correlation function. We show that it is possible to construct a modified mixture of single coherent pulses that does yield the correct first-order correlation function at equal space points. However, as we then demonstrate, such a mixture cannot reproduce the second-order correlation function.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1409.1926,
title = {Thermal light cannot be represented as a statistical mixture of single pulses},
author = {Aurélia Chenu and Agata M. Brańczyk and Gregory D. Scholes and J. E. Sipe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1926},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures. Published version