Twofold Joint Photocount Statistics for Mixed Thermal and Coherent Radiation

Abstract

The conventional model of the photodetection process and the short-time approximation are used to obtain the factorial moment generating function for the $N$-fold detection of mixed thermal and coherent radiation. This generating function is then used to obtain the photocount distribution for twofold joint photodetection. The photocount distribution is expressed as a threefold summation over Laguerre polynomials. The distribution is examined for the limiting cases of purely thermal radiation and uncorrelated fields.