MEASUREMENT OF PHOTON STATISTICS OF WIGGLER RADIATION FROM AN ELECTRON STORAGE RING

The number of visible photons emitted by an electron bunch moving through a wiggler in the Brookhaven Synchrotron Light Source storage ring was repetitively measured using an analog photon counting technique, and the photon counting distribution, which is the probability of finding n photons versus n, was obtained. The photoelectron-counting distribution of detected spontaneous light from the wiggler obeys a negative-binomial distribution consistent with a multi-electron, multimode description of the light generation process. In the absence of the wiggler, the bending-magnet light emerging from the pyrex exit port obeys the Neyman type-A distribution.