Black-body photon clustering by semi-classical means

Abstract

If stimulated emission could be turned off then only uncorrelated photons would be emitted from black bodies and the photon counting statistics would be Poissonian. Through the process of stimulated emission, some fraction of the photons emitted from a black body are correlated and thus emitted in clusters. This photon clustering can be calculated by semi-classical means. The corresponding results are in agreement with quantum theory.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Added proof that stimulated-emission produced photon clustering at the source leads to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect without invoking photon-photon interference. Fixed unit mistakes in the left hand side of Eqs (4), (6), (7), and (9