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arXiv:1604.07588 · Physical Review Letters

Nonclassicality Criteria in Multiport Interferometry

L. Rigovacca, Carlo D. Franco, B. J. Metcalf, Ian A. Walmsley, M. S. Kim

Published Nov 16, 2016• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Interference lies at the heart of the behavior of classical and quantum light. It is thus crucial to understand the boundaries between which interference patterns can be explained by a classical electromagnetic description of light and which, on the other hand, can only be understood with a proper quantum mechanical approach. While the case of two-mode interference has received a lot of attention, the multimode case has not yet been fully explored. Here we study a general scenario of intensity interferometry: we derive a bound on the average correlations between pairs of output intensities for the classical wavelike model of light, and we show how it can be violated in a quantum framework. As a consequence, this violation acts as a nonclassicality witness, able to detect the presence of sources with sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics. We also develop a criterion that can certify the impossibility of dividing a given interferometer into two independent subblocks.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.117.213602

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Interference lies at the heart of the behavior of classical and quantum light. It is thus crucial to understand the boundaries between which interference patterns can be explained by a classical electromagnetic description of light and which, on the other hand, can only be understood with a proper quantum mechanical approach. While the case of two-mode interference has received a lot of attention, the multimode case has not yet been fully explored. Here we study a general scenario of intensity interferometry: we derive a bound on the average correlations between pairs of output intensities for the classical wavelike model of light, and we show how it can be violated in a quantum framework. As a consequence, this violation acts as a nonclassicality witness, able to detect the presence of sources with sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics. We also develop a criterion that can certify the impossibility of dividing a given interferometer into two independent subblocks.
We develop a nonclassicality criterion for the interference of three delayed, but otherwise identical, light fields in a three-mode Bell interferometer. We do so by comparing the prediction of quantum mechanics with those of a classical framework in which independent sources emit electric fields with random phases. In particular, we evaluate third-order correlations among output intensities as a function of the delays, and show how the presence of a correlation revival for small delays cannot be explained by the classical model of light. The observation of a revival is thus a nonclassicality signature, which can be achieved only by sources with a photon-number statistics that is highly sub-Poissonian. Our analysis provides strong evidence for the nonclassicality of the experiment discussed by Menssen et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 153603 (2017)], and shows how a collective ``triad'' phase affects the interference of any three or more light fields, irrespective of their quantum or classical character.
We consider a way to generate operational inequalities to test nonclassicality (or quantumness) of multimode bosonic fields (or multiparty bosonic systems) that unifies the derivation of many known inequalities and allows to propose new ones. The nonclassicality criteria are based on Vogel's criterion corresponding to analyzing the positivity of multimode PPP functions or, equivalently, the positivity of matrices of expectation values of, e.g., creation and annihilation operators. We analyze not only monomials but also polynomial functions of such moments, which can sometimes enable simpler derivations of physically relevant inequalities. As an example, we derive various classical inequalities which can be violated only by nonclassical fields. In particular, we show how the criteria introduced here easily reduce to the well-known inequalities describing (a) multimode quadrature squeezing and its generalizations, including sum, difference, and principal squeezing; (b) two-mode one-time photon-number correlations, including sub-Poisson photon-number correlations and effects corresponding to violations of the Cauchy-Schwarz and Muirhead inequalities; (c) two-time single-mode photon-number correlations, including photon antibunching and hyperbunching; and (d) two- and three-mode quantum entanglement. Other simple inequalities for testing nonclassicality are also proposed. We have found some general relations between the nonclassicality and entanglement criteria, in particular those resulting from the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. It is shown that some known entanglement inequalities can be derived as nonclassicality inequalities within our formalism, while some other known entanglement inequalities can be seen as sums of more than one inequality derived from the nonclassicality criterion. This approach enables a deeper analysis of the entanglement for a given nonclassicality.
Uncertainty relations are fundamental to quantum mechanics, encoding limits on the simultaneous measurement of conjugate observables. Violations of joint uncertainty bounds can certify entanglement -- a resource critical for quantum information protocols and increasingly relevant in strong-field physics. Here, we investigate the pairwise time-delay and frequency-bandwidth uncertainties for arbitrary multimode quantum states of light, deriving a general lower bound for their joint product. We find that the nonclassical correction scales inversely with the average photon number, a behavior rooted in the so-called ``monogamy of entanglement''. These results clarify the intensity scaling of quantum advantages in nonclassical light states and highlight the interplay between entanglement and photon statistics.
Quantum information investigates the possibility of enhancing our ability to process and transmit information by directly exploiting quantum mechanical laws. When searching for improvement opportunities, one typically starts by assessing the range of outcomes classically attainable, and then investigates to what extent control over the quantum features of the system could be helpful, as well as the best performance that could be achieved. In this thesis we provide examples of these aspects, in linear optics, quantum metrology, and quantum communication. We start by providing a criterion able to certify whether the outcome of a linear optical evolution cannot be explained by the classical wave-like theory of light. We do so by identifying a tight lower bound on the amount of correlations that could be detected among output intensities, when classical electrodynamics theory is used to describe the fields. Rather than simply detecting nonclassicality, we then focus on its quantification. In particular, we consider the characterisation of the amount of squeezing encoded on selected quantum probes by an unknown external device, without prior information on the direction of application. We identify the single-mode Gaussian probes leading to the largest average precision in noiseless and noisy conditions, and discuss the advantages arising from the use of correlated two-mode probes. Finally, we improve current bounds on the ultimate performance attainable in a quantum communication scenario. Specifically, we bound the number of maximally entangled qubits, or private bits, shared by two parties after a communication protocol over a quantum network, without restrictions on their classical communication. As in previous investigations, our approach is based on the evaluation of the maximum amount of entanglement that could be generated by the channels in the network, but it includes the possibility of changing entanglement measure on a channel-by-channel basis. Examples where this is advantageous are discussed.
The efficient certification of nonclassical effects of light forms the basis for applications in optical quantum technologies. We derive general correlation conditions for the verification of nonclassical light based on multiplexed detection. The obtained nonclassicality criteria are valid for imperfectly balanced multiplexing scenarios with on-off detectors and do not require any knowledge about the detector system. In this sense, they are fully independent of the detector system. In our experiment, we study light emitted by clusters of single-photon emitters, whose photon number may exceed the number of detection channels. Even under such conditions, our criteria certify nonclassicality with high statistical significance.
In the first part of this dissertation a framework for categorizing entropic measures of nonclassical correlations in bipartite quantum states is presented. The measures are based on the difference between a quantum entropic quantity and the corresponding classical quantity obtained from measurements on the two systems. Three types of entropic quantities are used, and three different measurement strategies are applied to these quantities. Many of the resulting measures of nonclassical correlations have been proposed previously. Properties of the various measures are explored, and results of evaluating the measures for two-qubit quantum states are presented. To demonstrate how these measures differ from entanglement we move to the set of Bell-diagonal states for two qubits, which can be depicted as a tetrahedron in three dimensions. We consider the level surfaces of entanglement and of the correlation measures from our framework for Bell-diagonal states. This provides a complete picture of the structure of entanglement and discord for this simple case and, in particular, of their nonanalytic behavior under decoherence. The pictorial approach also indicates how to show that all of the proposed correlation measures are neither convex nor concave. In the second part we look at two practical interferometric setups that use nonclassical states of light to enhance their performance. First we consider an interferometer powered by laser light (a coherent state) into one input port and ask the following question: what is the best state to inject into the second input port, given a constraint on the mean number of photons this state can carry, in order to optimize the interferometer's phase sensitivity? This question is the practical question for high-sensitivity interferometry. We answer the question by considering the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound for such a setup. The answer is squeezed vacuum. Then we analyze the ultimate bounds on the phase sensitivity of an interferometer, given the constraint that the state input to the interferometer's initial 50:50 beam splitter B is a product state of the two input modes. Requiring a product state is a natural restriction: if one were allowed to input an arbitrary, entangled two-mode state ∣Ξ⟩|\Xi \rangle∣Ξ⟩ to the beam splitter, one could generally just as easily input the state B∣Ξ⟩B|\Xi \rangleB∣Ξ⟩ directly into the two modes after the beam splitter, thus rendering the beam splitter unnecessary. We find optimal states for a fixed photon number and for a fixed mean photon number. Our results indicate that entanglement is not a crucial resource for quantum-enhanced interferometry. Initially the analysis for both of these setups is performed for the idealized case of a lossless interferometer. Then the analysis is extended to the more realistic scenario where the interferometer suffers from photon losses.