Unequivocal differentiation of coherent and chaotic light through interferometric photon correlation measurements
A. Lebreton, I. Abram, R. Braive, I. Sagnes, I. Robert-Philip, and A. Beveratos
Accepted
We present a novel experimental technique that can differentiate unequivocally between chaotic light and coherent light with amplitude fluctuations, and thus permits to characterize unambiguously the output of a laser. This technique consists of measuring the second-order intensity cross-correlation at the outputs of an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. It is applied to a chaotic light source and to the output of a semiconductor nanolaser whose "standard" intensity correlation function above-threshold displays values compatible with a mixture of coherent and chaotic light. Our experimental results demonstrate that the output of such lasers is not partially chaotic but is indeed a coherent state with amplitude fluctuations.