A direct measurement of the generating function for photoelectron counting experiments in the case of a Lorentz spectral line

Abstract

Measurements of the probability P(0) of detecting zero optical photons during a fixed counting time are used to verify an exact calculation of this quantity for the case of gaussian light with a Lorentz spectral line. The measurement of P(0) is of particular interest since it provides an explicit measurement of the 'generating function' Q( lambda ,t) mod lambda =1 used to generate all of the other probabilities P(n). The excellent agreement of the measurements with the exact calculation validates the use of this calculation in determining the corrections to the 'short time' approximation commonly used in photon counting experiments.