We develop a quantum theory for continuous photodetection processes that describes nonunitary time development of the field under continuous measurement of photon number. Exact expressions are obtained for time evolutions of the photon-field density operator, average and variance of the photon number, and the Fano factor. These are applied to typical quantum states, i.e., number, coherent, thermal, and squeezed states. The continuous photodetection process is made up of two elementary processes in terms of the referring measurement process, that is, one-count and no-count processes. Just after the one-count process in which a photodetector registers one photoelectron, the average photon number 〈n(t)〉 of the remaining field is shown to increase for super-Poissonian states (e.g., thermal state) and decrease for sub-Poissonian states (e.g., number state); for the Poissonian state (e.g., coherent light), 〈n(t)〉 does not change. During the no-count process in which the photodetector registers no photoelectrons, on the other hand, 〈n(t)〉 decreases in time for all states except the number state. The physical origins for these results are clarified from the viewpoint of nonunitary state reduction by continuous measurement of photon number. Furthermore, we introduce a nonreferring measurement process in which the detector registers photocounts, but we discard all readout information. We discuss the difference in the way the photon field evolves in this process compared to the referring measurement process.

• Received 26 October 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.41.3891