It is pointed out that, although squeezing and sub-Poissonian photon statistics need not go together, in the sense that an electromagnetic field may exhibit one but not the other, the method that is normally used to detect a squeezed state automatically generates sub-Poissonian photon statistics. However, when these considerations are applied to the fluorescence from a coherently driven atom, which exhibits both squeezing and sub-Poisson fluctuations, one finds that the statistics of the emitted photons show even larger departures from classical field theory than the squeezing.

• Received 10 May 1982

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.136