Photoelectron statistics for two independent, nonuniform random-phase sinusoids plus additive Gaussian noise with application to optical heterodyne detection

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the first-order photoelectron statistics for the ideal optical heterodyne situation (perfect alignment of the incident signal wave and the local oscillator wave) in the presence of a Gaussian noise background. The phases of the signal wave and the local oscillator wave are taken to be nonuniformly distributed over (−π, π). We investigate the probability density of the time-integrated intensity, the probability distribution of the detected photoelectrons, and the corresponding means and variances. Two different optical heterodyning situations are studied.

© 1984 Optical Society of America

Direct derivation of intensity and phase statistics of speckle produced by a weak scatterer from the random sinusoid model

Richard Barakat
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 71(1) 86-90 (1981)

Onefold photoelectron-counting statistics of mixtures of thermal and coherent radiation

Richard Barakat
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(4) 539-543 (1985)

Single-threshold detection of a random signal in noise with multiple independent observations. 1: Discrete case with application to optical communications

Paul R. Prucnal and Malvin Carl Teich
Appl. Opt. 17(22) 3576-3583 (1978)

Onefold photoelectron-counting statistics for non-Gaussian light: scattering from an arbitrary number of weak scatterers

Richard Barakat
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 73(9) 1138-1142 (1983)

Signal-to-noise ratio in optical heterodyne detection for Gaussian fields

Takashi Takenaka, Kazumasa Tanaka, and Otozo Fukumitsu
Appl. Opt. 17(21) 3466-3471 (1978)