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Bidimensional measurements of photon statistics within a multimodal temporal framework

C. Hainaut1,*, K. Ouahrouche1, A. Rançon1,2, G. Patera1, C. Ouarkoub1, M. Le Parquier1, P. Suret1, and A. Amo1

  • *Contact author: clement.hainaut@univ-lille.fr
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013286 – Published 16 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9rx6-3n8z

Abstract

Ultrafast imaging of photon statistics in two dimensions is a powerful tool for probing nonequilibrium and transient optical phenomena, yet it remains experimentally challenging due to the simultaneous need for high temporal resolution and statistical fidelity. In this work, we demonstrate spatially resolved single-shot measurements of photon number distributions using difference-frequency generation in a nonlinear Beta Barium Borate crystal. We show that our platform can discriminate between coherent and thermal photon statistics across two spatial dimensions with picosecond resolution. At the same time, we find that the retrieved distributions deviate from the ideal ones, a consequence of vacuum contamination and the multimodal response of the amplifier. To explain this, we develop a temporal mode decomposition framework that captures the essential physics of signal amplification and fluorescence, and quantitatively reproduces the experimental findings. This establishes a robust approach for measuring two-dimensional photon statistics while clarifying the fundamental factors that limit the fidelity of such measurements.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013286– Published 16 March, 2026
  • Received 17 November 2025
  • Accepted 20 February 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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