Manipulating thermal light states by the controlled addition and subtraction of single photons

We report the generation and the tomographic analysis of novel quantum states of light generated by the controlled addition and subtraction of single photons to and from a classical and fully incoherent thermal light field. Time-domain quantum tomography is used to thoroughly investigate the character of the resulting states. Several different criteria are employed to test and quantify nonclassicality of photon-added thermal states, while the peculiar features concerning the mean photon number of photon-subtracted thermal states are clearly observed.