Photon statistics (original) (raw)

Photon statistics is the theoretical and experimental study of the statistical distributions produced in photon counting experiments, which use photodetectors to analyze the intrinsic statistical nature of photons in a light source. In these experiments, light incident on the photodetector generates photoelectrons and a counter registers electrical pulses generating a statistical distribution of photon counts. Low intensity disparate light sources can be differentiated by the corresponding statistical distributions produced in the detection process.