A proposal for measuring photon temporal coherence in continuum radiation

Abstract: A technique complementary to those for spectral lines is proposed for the observation of continuum radiation. As, quantum mechanically, the radiation is a mixture of pure states, it should be possible to measure the temporal coherence of the states as a function of energy. We propose here experiments with just this possibility, showing the empirical grounds on which it is based. A simple means of measuring temporal coherence is with the extent of the interference pattern produced in a Young's double-slit experiment. Thus, we propose the use of such an experiment, but with a screen of energy measuring photon detectors, small enough and sensitive enough to delineate the interference patterns according to photon energy. We then only register a detection if the absorbed photon is found to have the energy of interest. In this way, we have allowed the interference, i.e., the wave aspect of the experiment, to proceed as normal, recovering the interference pattern by accumulating just those registered detections. We, also, explain why this form of filtering does not actually violate the conventional wisdom that, when using an optical filter with incident continuum radiation to separate out the photons of a particular energy, only the temporal coherence of the filter's passband would be measured. It naturally then introduces the concept of a detections filter, differentiating it from an optical filter.