Effects of time dependence in the second order coherence of pulsed light

Abstract

For light in a single temporal mode, the time dependence is associated entirely with the deterministic pulse shape rather than the quantum state. This means the second order coherence of light can no longer be understood as the temporal distribution of photons. We calculate the distribution of photon arrival time differences for pulsed light and find that it is inherently strongly bunched in terms of photocount arrival time differences. We further show how to account for the pulse shape when determining the second order coherence that characterizes quantum states.