Spectroscopic test of Bose-Einstein statistics for photons

Abstract

Using Bose-Einstein-statistics-forbidden two-photon excitation in atomic barium, we have limited the rate of statistics-violating transitions, as a fraction $ν$ of an equivalent statistics-allowed transition rate, to $ν<4.0\times10^{-11}$ at the 90% confidence level. This is an improvement of more than three orders of magnitude over the best previous result. Additionally, hyperfine-interaction enabling of the forbidden transition has been observed, to our knowledge, for the first time.