# Accurate detection of arbitrary photon statistics

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a highly accurate, systematic-error-free measurement workflow for photon statistics, enabling precise detection of diverse photon states with fidelity up to 0.998, surpassing previous limitations.

## Contribution

It presents a reconfigurable photon-number-resolving detector combined with custom electronics and algorithms for error-free photon statistics measurement, achieving unprecedented accuracy.

## Key findings

- Achieved average fidelity of 0.998 in photon-number distribution measurements.
- Successfully detected a wide range of light states including non-classical and non-Gaussian.
- Measured autocorrelation g^(2) from 0.006 to 2 across various photon states.

## Abstract

We report a measurement workflow free of systematic errors consisting of a reconfigurable photon-number-resolving detector, custom electronic circuitry, and faithful data-processing algorithm. We achieve unprecedentedly accurate measurement of various photon-number distributions going beyond the number of detection channels with average fidelity 0.998, where the error is contributed primarily by the sources themselves. Mean numbers of photons cover values up to 20 and faithful autocorrelation measurements range from g^(2) = 0.006 to 2. We successfully detect chaotic, classical, non-classical, non-Gaussian, and negative-Wigner-function light. Our results open new paths for optical technologies by providing full access to the photon-number information.