Shot noise

Shot noise or Poisson noise is a type of noise which can be modeled by a Poisson process.In electronics shot noise originates from the discrete nature of electric charge. Shot noise also occurs in photon counting in optical devices, where shot noise is associated with the particle nature of light. Shot noise or Poisson noise is a type of noise which can be modeled by a Poisson process.In electronics shot noise originates from the discrete nature of electric charge. Shot noise also occurs in photon counting in optical devices, where shot noise is associated with the particle nature of light. It is known that in a statistical experiment such as tossing a fair coin and counting the occurrences of heads and tails, the numbers of heads and tails after a great many throws will differ by only a tiny percentage, while after only a few throws outcomes with a significant excess of heads over tails or vice versa are common; if an experiment with a few throws is repeated over and over, the outcomes will fluctuate a lot. It can be proven that the relative fluctuations reduce as the reciprocal square root of the number of throws, a result valid for all statistical fluctuations, including shot noise.