The Skellam distribution is a discrete distribution that describes the difference between two independent Poisson distributions with possibly different parameters.
The Skellam distribution was first investigated by Skellam (1946), after Irwin (1937) investigated the special case of the underlying Poisson distributions having the same parameter. It is discussed by Abramowitz & Stegun (1965, pp. 374-378).
References:
Abramowitz, Milton; Stegun, Irene A., eds. (1965). Handbook of mathematical functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables. Dover
Irwin, J. O. (1937) "The frequency distribution of the difference between two independent variates following the same Poisson distribution." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 100 (3), 415–416.
Skellam, J. G. (1946) "The frequency distribution of the difference between two Poisson variates belonging to different populations". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 109 (3), 296.