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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
A photon-counting astronomical instrument for optical observations with nanosecond time resolution is being developed to observe the statistical distribution of photons in time. The purpose of this ‘quantum-optical spectrometer’ is to measure quantum-statistical properties of the photon gas and to study the physics of radiative deexcitation. The amount of photon bunching in time contains information on parameters such as the fraction of stimulated emission and the degree of frequency redistribution that the light has undergone.