Real time g (2) monitoring with 100 kHz sampling rate.

We introduce a technique to determine photon correlations of optical light fields in real time. The method is based on ultrafast phase-randomized homodyne detection and allows us to follow the temporal evolution of the second-order correlation function g ⁽²⁾ (0) of a light field. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach by applying it to a laser diode operated in the threshold region. In particular, we are able to monitor the emission dynamics of the diode switching back and forth between lasing and spontaneous emission with a g ⁽²⁾ (0)-sampling rate of 100 kHz.