Abstract

In recent papers by Cohen-Tannoudji and Dalibard¹ and Zoller et al.² the statistics of quantum jumps in a three-level atom are analyzed in terms of the joint probability density W(t + τ;t) for a photon emission at time t followed by the next photon emission at time t+ τ. W(t+ τ;t) differs from the second-order correlation function G⁽²⁾ (t + τ;t) often used to characterize photon statistics; the latter gives the joint emission probability without the condition that there be no emissions in the interval t to t + τ. Alter dividing by the density for single-photon emission, W(t + τ;t) gives the probability density for a delay τ between photon emissions.

© 1987 Optical Society of America