INTEREVENT INTERVAL STATISTICS IN CLIPPED DETECTION AND THEIR APPLICABILITY TO SPECKLE INTERFEROMETRY AND SPECKLE MASKING

Speckle interferometry and speckle masking techniques are based on the measurement of the autocorrelation and triple-correlation functions. The measurement of intervals between photoevents has been proved to be a good alternative to direct evaluation of the correlation functions, since it is faster to compute and, under certain conditions, it can p rovide a better signal-to-noise ratio. We extend the interval and doub le-interval probability distribution techniques to the actual case of using clipped detection. The accuracy of these techniques is compared with that of the direct measurement of the autocorrelation and triple- correlation functions of clipped data.