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REVIEWS OF TOPICAL PROBLEMS

The nonclassical light

D. N. Klyshko

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Physics

Abstract: Properties of the nonclassical light (NCL) have been considered with an emphasis on experimentally-observed features, which are underlain by the well-known Mandel's formula connecting the statistics of photocounts with that of light falling on the detector. A systematic operational approach is presented to study the NCL using two parallel sets of numbers measured: probabilities of photocounts {p_m} and normalised factorial moments of counts {g_k}. Two particular examples are examined in detail: a 'heated' squeezed vacuum and a 'heated' one-photon state. An alternative method is proposed to discover the week nonclassicality using 'generalised' moments {a_k(s)}. The effect of the linear absorption (amplification) and of the beam-splitting of the NCL, and the relation between the NCL and the absolute calibration of photodetectors are considered. The conditions are elucidated whereat the beam-splitter realises a mathematical operation of superposition of two one-mode fields useful in studying the NCL.

PACS: 03.65.Bz, 12.20.Ds, 07.60.Dq, 42.50.Dv

Received: May 1, 1996

DOI: 10.3367/UFNr.0166.199606b.0613

 English version: Physics–Uspekhi, 1996, 39:6, 573–596

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