Classical Light Sources with Tunable Temporal Coherence and Tailored Photon Number Distributions

We demonstrate the generation of classical incoherent light with electronic control over its temporal characteristics and photon number distribution. The tunability of the temporal coherence is shown, under both classical and quantum detection, through second order correlation ($G^2(\tau)$) measurements. The tailoring of desired classical photon number distributions is illustrated by creating two representative light sources - one thermal and the other a specific classical, non-Gaussian state. Such generation of classical light sources, quite different from existing natural light sources, is likely to be a useful resource in quantum information processing. As a particular application in this direction we outline how a non-Gaussian state generated in this manner may be mixed with an appropriate non-classical Gaussian state at a beamsplitter, to generate non-Gaussian entanglement.