Paper detail

Arcsine Laws of Light

We demonstrate that light in a coherently driven resonator obeys Lévy's arcsine laws -- a cornerstone of extreme value statistics. This behavior emerges asymptotically in the time-integrated transmitted intensity, an important quantity which is measured by every photodetector. We furthermore demonstrate a universal algebraic convergence to the arcsine laws as the integration time increases, independent of the balance between conservative and non-conservative forces exerted on the light field. Through numerical simulations we verify that the arcsine laws are also obeyed by the light field quadratures, and in a Kerr nonlinear resonator supporting non-Gaussian states of light. Our results are relevant to fundamental studies and technological applications of coherently driven resonators (in e.g., optics, microwave photonics, and acoustics), which in turn open up perspectives for probing emergent statistical structure in new regimes and in systems with memory.