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1965: First experimental evidence of the statistical difference between a laser and a random field [22,23]. It was obtained by photon statistics, and it included evidence of the bunching phenomenon for Gaussian sources already explored by Hanbury-Brown and Twiss, but also of the absence of such a bunching for a laser field [24]. These experiments provided a physical ground for Glauber's theory of coherence.
1966-67: Application of the above methods to laser fluctuations at threshold, yielding the first experimental evidence of critical fluctuations [30] and slowing down [31] in a "phase transition out of equilibrium", as called later.
1967: Transient statistics of a laser switched from below to above threshold [33]: a new phenomenon was discovered, i.e. a transient enhancement of the photon variance.
1989: The time statistics permits an accurate calibration of the initial photon number giving rise to the amplified chain in a laser. This method has been called "statistical microscope" [157] because it provides measurement of a small photon number not by electron multiplication (as in usual photomultipliers) but by photon multiplication.
2002: Quantum state reconstruction by tomography [289]
2003: Nonlocal experiments on entangled photon pairs [290]
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