Multiphoton antibunching in the photodetection of cavity radiation
Ching Tsung Lee · Quantum and Semiclassical Optics Journal of the European Optical Society Part B · 1995
Antibunching is defined to be when the conditional waiting time in the photodetection is longer than the unconditional one. However, when this criterion is used on the waiting times for the closed-system detection of one photon from the so-called odd-shadowed thermal state, it shows no antibunching, although the state is proven to be non-classical. It does show antibunching in the waiting times for two-photon detection. This provides the motivation for extending the concept of photon antibunching to the detection of more than one photon. The general expressions for the expectation values of unconditional and conditional waiting times for multiphoton detection are derived. Then it is rigorously proven that multiphoton antibunching implies non-classicality which is defined to be when the P function is not positive definite.