Spatial interference of macroscopic light fields from independent Raman sources

Abstract

We observed single-shot spatial interference from two independent pulsed-light sources using stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in the transient, macroscopic-field regime. By measuring the phase distribution of the Stokes field and the fourth-order spatial correlation function, we verified that the Stokes field obeys thermallike statistics in the unsaturated SRS gain regime. This reflects the properties of the underlying quantum noise in the vacuum field and scattering medium. A transition from thermallike to laserlike statistics occurs when the gain becomes saturated.