The effect of pump coherence on frequency conversion and parametric amplification

The consequences of the deviation from ideal coherence of the driving (pump) field in nonlinear processes are examined. A detailed treatment of the processes of parametric amplification and frequency upconversion is presented. The treatment utilizes two different approximation methods to suit the two different physical situations considered. For slow phase variations of the pump field an adiabatic approach is useful, whereas in the treatment of fast phase variations (the nonadiabatic case) an equation describing the time evolution of the representation is found to be a good starting point. In this latter case, a closed hierarchy of equations for the moments of the photon number distribution in the signal (or idler) mode is found. In particular, we find that the efficiencies of both the amplification and the upconversion processes are reduced as a result of pump incoherence, the reduction becoming more severe in the highly incoherent case. For the frequency converter, the very nature of the process is modified as compared to the ideal case, and this modification is again of particular significance for the highly incoherent pump. Second-order moments are explicitly calculated and some of the statistical properties of the output signals are examined.