Abstract

Nonclassical effects exhibited by the homodyned field when light from an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is mixed with coherent light from a local oscillator are discussed. Calculations are carried out exactly without making the strong local oscillator approximation. It is found that, depending upon the local oscillator phase and the parameters characterizing the light from the OPO, the second order intensity correlation function of the superposed field violates various classical inequalities g⁽²⁾(0) ≥ 1, g⁽²⁾(0) ≥g⁽²⁾(τ), and |g⁽²⁾(0) –1| ≥ | g⁽²⁾(τ)–1|. Thus we can see sub-Poissonian or super-Poissonian statistics and bunching or antibunching. We express the fields at the beam splitter in terms of independent real Gaussian stochastic processes with coherent component. Using these properties of the dynamical field variables, we derive analytic expressions for quantities directly measurable in photon counting experiments. It is found that the waiting time distribution shows two extrema at nonzero times. The second order intensity correlation function is found to vanish at nonzero time in violation of a classical inequality.

© 1992 Optical Society of America