Abstract
The first observation of a statistical spread in the leading edge of a transient He-Ne laser pulse was associated with the appearance of a large peak in the variance of the transient photon number distribution1. This fact was explained in terms of an approximately deterministic decay out of a macroscopic unstable state, to be averaged over the statistical distribution of the initial states2. The assumption of deterministic evolution neglected the role of fluctuations along the build-up with respect to the initial ones. A quest for a discrimination between fluctuations on the initial condition and those along the path led to a new observation method, based on the statistics of passage times at a given threshold 3,4,5.
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References
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© 1989 Plenum Press, New York
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Arecchi, F.T., Meucci, R., Roversi, J.A. (1989). Determination of a Small Photon Number by Statistical Amplifying Transients. In: Eberly, J.H., Mandel, L., Wolf, E. (eds) Coherence and Quantum Optics VI. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0847-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0847-8_12
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