Noise Reduction in Photon Counting by Exploiting Spatial Correlations

Joint photocount distributions of a weak twin beam acquired by an intensified CCD camera are analyzed with respect to the beam spatial correlations. A method for extracting these correlations from the experimental joint photocount distributions is suggested using a suitable statistical model that quantifies the contribution of spatial correlations to the joint photocount distributions. In detail, the profile of a twin-beam intensity spatial cross-correlation function is revealed from the curve that gives the genuine mean photon-pair number (both photons from a pair are detected) as a function of the extent of the detection area. Also, the principle of reducing the noise in photon-number-resolving detection by using spatial correlations is experimentally demonstrated.