Statistics of photocounts in parametric frequency conversion
The variance and average value of photocounts (counts of electrons emitted by the cathode of a photodetector) are calculated allowing for the existence of the following sources of noise in a frequency converter: fluctuations of the pump intensity, conversion of background radiation, thermal fluctuations of fields in the converter crystal, spontaneous generation of the difference frequency, and illumination of the photodetector with the pump radiation transmitted by filters. A function representing the distribution of photocounts is obtained for short time intervals allowing for fluctuations of the pumping intensity in the case of conversion of a random Gaussian signal.