Two-photon superbunching effect of broadband chaotic stationary light at femtosecond timescale based on cascaded Michelson interferometer

Abstract

It is challenging for observing superbunching effect with true chaotic light, here we propose and demonstrate a method to achieve superbunching effect of the degree of second-order coherence is 2.42 with broadband stationary chaotic light based on a cascaded Michelson interferometer (CMI), exceeding the theoretical upper limit of 2 for the two-photon bunching effect of chaotic light. The superbunching correlation peak is measured with an ultrafast two-photon absorption detector which the full width at half maximum reaches about 95 fs. Two-photon superbunching theory in a CMI is developed to interpret the effect and is in agreement with experimental results. The theory also predicts that the degree of second-order coherence can be much greater than $2$ if chaotic light propagates $N$ times in a CMI. Finally, a new type of weak signals detection setup which employs broadband chaotic light circulating in a CMI is proposed. Theoretically, it can increase the detection sensitivity of weak signals 79 times after the chaotic light circulating 100 times in the CMI.

8 pages, 5 figures