Bunching, Unbunching, and Antibunching of Light

Abstract

Light exists in many different forms that exhibit surprising properties. These properties can be harnessed to understand fundamental processes associated with subtle effects of light and help develop new kinds of devices capable of making high-precision measurements. To understand the different forms of light, there are two major theoretical frameworks: (1) semiclassical theory and (2) complete quantum theory. Although semiclassical theory offers simplicity, it does not account for quantum behavior, whereas quantum theory is capable of explaining almost all the existing forms of light including bunching, anti-bunching, and their variants. Such light is known to exhibit distributions that are not Poisson in nature and can exhibit sub- and super-Poisson behavior. In this chapter, we will also briefly discuss how to generate these unusual forms of light.