Unequivocal Differentiation of Coherent and Chaotic Light through Interferometric Photon Correlation Measurements
A. Lebreton, I. I. Abram, Rémy Braive, Isabelle Sagnes, Isabelle Robert-Philip, A. Beveratos · Physical Review Letters · 2013
We present a novel experimental technique that can differentiate unequivocally between chaotic light and coherent light with amplitude fluctuations, and thus permits us to characterize unambiguously the output of a laser. This technique consists of measuring the second-order intensity cross correlation at the outputs of an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. It is applied to a chaotic light source and to the output of a semiconductor nanolaser whose "standard" intensity correlation function above threshold displays values compatible with a mixture of coherent and chaotic light. Our experimental results demonstrate that the output of such lasers is not partially chaotic but is indeed a coherent state with amplitude fluctuations.