Thermal light cannot be represented as a statistical mixture of single pulses

Abstract

We ask whether or not thermal light can be represented as a mixture of single broadband coherent pulses. We find that it cannot. Such a mixture is simply not rich enough to mimic thermal light; indeed, it cannot even reproduce the first-order correlation function. We show that it is possible to construct a modified mixture of single coherent pulses that does yield the correct first-order correlation function at equal space points. However, as we then demonstrate, such a mixture cannot reproduce the second-order correlation function.

5 pages, 2 figures. Published version

References in corpus (3)

• Does coherence enhance transport in photosynthesis?
• Molecular Response in One-Photon Absorption via Natural Thermal Light vs Pulsed Laser Excitation
• First-order decomposition of thermal light in terms of a statistical mixture of pulses

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