How colors influence numbers: Photon statistics of parametric down-conversion

Parametric down-conversion (PDC) is a technique of ubiquitous experimental significance in the production of nonclassical, photon-number-correlated twin beams. Standard theory of PDC as a two-mode squeezing process predicts and homodyne measurements observe a thermal photon number distribution per beam. Recent experiments have obtained conflicting distributions. In this article, we explain the observation by an a priori theoretical model solely based on directly accessible physical quantities. We compare our predictions with experimental data and find excellent agreement.