3rd Order Temporal Correlation Function of Pseudo-Thermal Light

Abstract

This experiment reports a nontrivial third-order temporal correlation of chaotic-thermal light in which the randomly radiated thermal light is observed to have a 6-times greater chance of being captured by three individual photodetectors simultaneously than that of being captured by three photodetectors at different times (separated by the coherent time of pseudo-thermal light), indicating a "three-photon bunching" effect. The nontrivial correlation of thermal light is the result of multi-photon interference.