Abstract

We investigate the relation between the photocounting statistics of a laser beam in free space and the properties of the light inside the laser cavity. We show that they are related to the normalized second order correlation function of the field in the cavity. The evaluation of all experimental quantities in terms of this function leads to very simple results, especially when dealing with non-classical states. We demonstrate this by the analysis of a number state and find that the statistics depend on two parameters: the average photon life time in the cavity (also equal to the coherence time of the laser) and the loss rate through the partially reflecting mirror.

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