Nonclassical photocounting statistics with a single on-off detector

Any single on-off photocounter, which can only detect the presence or absence of photons without discriminating their number, is not capable of identifying the nonclassical nature of light. This limitation arises because any photocounting statistics obtained with such a detector can be easily reproduced with coherent states of a light mode. We show that a simple modification of an on-off detector—introducing controlled attenuation as a tunable setting—enables such detectors to reveal nonclassical properties of radiation fields.