Recently, Arecchi, Berne, and Sona reported results of theoretical and experimental investigations on the twofold joint photocount distributions of a stationary Gaussian-Markovian radiation field. In this paper, we generalize their results by deriving the iV-fold joint photocount distribution of a Gaussian (thermal) radiation field of arbitrary spectral profile, when the counting-time intervals are short compared to the coherence time of the light. The present analysis provides simple recurrence relations for the iV-fold joint photocount distributions and for their generalized factorial moments. These relations are derived with the help of an NXN generating matrix which is introduced here. The present analysis also indicates to what extent the i^-fold joint photocount distributions contain useful information about the higher-order coherence properties of the radiation field.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.