Abstract

There have been only a-few cases in which nonclassical light has been generated in the laboratory. Recently, Short and Mandel¹ demonstrated that laser-excited resonance fluorescence radiation from isolated Na atoms takes the form of sub—Poisson nonstationary individual emissions. Constructing a sub-Poisson light source from a collection of such emissions is a difficult task, however, because the excitation statistics must also be made sub-Poisson,² In their experiment these statistics are determined by the number of atoms in the field of view of the apparatus, and there is no clear way in which this number can be regulated. If the excitation statistics are Poisson, as expected, then the photon emissions will be Poisson at best.²

© 1984 Optical Society of America