Hanbury Brown and Twiss anticorrelation in disordered photonic lattices

TL;DR

This study investigates Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlations in disordered photonic lattices, revealing photon antibunching and intensity anticorrelations linked to Anderson localization, despite uniform intensity distribution.

Contribution

It demonstrates the observation of photon antibunching and intensity anticorrelations in disordered lattices under uniform excitation, highlighting non-Gaussian statistics in such systems.

Findings

Observation of intensity anticorrelations in disordered lattices

Anticorrelations linked to transverse Anderson localization

Uniform intensity distribution despite localization effects

Abstract

We report measurements of Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlation of coherent light transmitted through disordered one-dimensional photonic lattices. Although such a lattice exhibits transverse Anderson localization when a single input site is excited, uniform excitation precludes its observation. By examining the Hanbury Brown--Twiss correlation for a uniformly excited disordered lattice, we observe intensity anticorrelations associated with photon antibunching--a signature of non-Gaussian statistics. Although the measured average intensity distribution is uniform, transverse Anderson localization nevertheless underlies the observed anticorrelation.