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

Abstract

It is challenging to observe the superbunching effect with true chaotic light. Here we propose and demonstrate a method to achieve the superbunching effect of ${g}^{(2)}(0)=2.42\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02$ 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 whose 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 type of weak signal detection setup that 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 circulates 100 times in the CMI.