Hau-riege, S. P.

Photon statistics in attenuators

We derive expressions for the transmission photon statistics of N photons irradiating one or multiple attenuators. The composition of the attenuators themselves may be statistically varying, which is a model for a paramagnetic material in which atoms of di erent spin states absorb di erently. Note that classical electromagnetic radiation emitted by a single-mode laser is best described by Glauber coherent states, so assigning exactly N photons to this state is strictly not correct: Glauber states are superpositions of number states, so the number of incoming photons itself is a stochastic variable. We neglect all that.