Measuring photon correlation using imperfect detectors

Abstract

Single-photon detectors are ``blind" after the detection of a photon, and thereafter display a characteristic recovery in efficiency, during which the number of undetected photons depends on the statistics of the incident light. We show how the efficiency-recovery, photon statistics and intensity have an interdependent relationship which suppresses a detector's ability to count photons and measure correlations. We also demonstrate this effect with an experiment using $n$ such detectors to determine the $n^{\mathrm{th}}$ order correlation function with pseudothermal light.