The standard expressions for the noise that is due to photon fluctuations in thermal background radiation typically apply only for a single detector and are often strictly valid only for single-mode illumination. I describe a technique for rigorously calculating thermal photon noise, which allows for arbitrary numbers of optical inputs and detectors, multiple-mode illumination, and both internal and external noise sources. Several simple examples are given, and a general result is obtained for multimode detectors. The formalism uses scattering matrices, noise correlation matrices, and some fundamentals of quantum optics. The covariance matrix of the photon noise at the detector outputs is calculated and includes the Hanbury Brown and Twiss photon-bunching correlations. These correlations can be of crucial importance, and they explain why instruments such as autocorrelation spectrometers and pairwise-combined interferometers are competitive (and indeed common) at radio wavelengths but have a sensitivity disadvantage at optical wavelengths. The case of autocorrelation spectrometers is studied in detail.

© 2003 Optical Society of America

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