Observation of dead-time-modified photocounting distributions for modulated laser radiation

We report a series of optical experiments that verify the theoretical photocounting distributions obtained by Diament and Teich for triangularly and sinusoidally modulated laser radiation. Another series of experiments validates the (nonparalyzable) dead-time-modified versions of these formulas obtained by Cantor and Teich. A new expression is obtained for the counting distribution in the presence of modulation and paralyzable dead time. The results have application in photon counting, nuclear counting, and neural counting.