Photon statistics of amplified spontaneous emission in a dense wavelength-division multiplexing regime

The photon statistics of amplified spontaneous emission in the few-modes regime and in single mode, conditions that are typical of dense wavelength-division multiplexing transmission, have been experimentally proved by direct detection. The dependence of the degeneracy factor for the Bose-Einstein distribution on the degree of second-order coherence of light is stated. The theoretical dependence of the number of amplified spontaneous emission modes on the ratio between the optical channel and the detector bandwidths has also been confirmed by experiments, thus quantifying the loss of validity of asymptotic approximations when they are extended to the few-modes regime. © 2003 Optical Society of America.