Abstract

Statistical properties such as the cumulants, and the central, factorial, and ordinary moments are obtained for photocounting distributions when the incident radiation is intensity-modulated with arbitrary statistics. The results are applied in some detail to the cases of triangular, sinusoidal, and square-wave modulation of multimode superposed coherent and chaotic radiation. The coefficient of variation, skewness, and kurtosis are obtained as a function of modulation depth. Comparison is made with experimental data in the cases of triangular and sinusoidal modulation of a laser source.

© 1979 Optical Society of America

Photoelectron-Counting Distributions for Irradiance-Modulated Radiation*

Paul Diament and M. C. Teich
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 60(5) 682-689 (1970)

Photoelectron Count Distributions Due to Periodic Irradiance Modulation*†

William G. Clark and Edward L. O’Neill
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 61(7) 934-938 (1971)

Receiver performance evaluation using photocounting cumulants with application to atmospheric turbulence

Paul R. Prucnal
Appl. Opt. 19(21) 3611-3616 (1980)

Higher-order skewness and excess coefficients of some probability distributions applicable to optical propagation phenomena

Arun K. Majumdar
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(1) 199-202 (1979)

Observation of dead-time-modified photocounting distributions for modulated laser radiation

Malvin Carl Teich and Giovanni Vannucci
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 68(10) 1338-1342 (1978)