Add to ORKGInternational audienceThe instants of time emission of photoelectrons generated by a detector immersed in an optical field constitute a point compound Poisson process. A complete definition of such a process is introduced to calculate some average values of the distribution. The shot noise due to this point process is also considered and we study the difference .between the deterministic and the random shot noises. They are completely defined by the set of their characteristic functions. We consider also the asymptotic properties of the shot noise and we show that for large mean density of the point process the fluctuations are not described by a Gaussian, but by a Gaussian compound random function. Thus the central limit theorem is not str...