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arXiv:1611.06445 · Physical Review A

Observation of spatial quantum correlations in the macroscopic regime

Ashok Kumar, Hayden Nunley, Alberto M. Marino

Published May 19, 2017• 40 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Spatial quantum correlations in the transverse degree of freedom promise to enhance optical resolution, image detection, and quantum communications through parallel quantum information encoding. In particular, the ability to observe these spatial quantum correlations in a single shot will enable such enhancements in applications that require real-time imaging, such as particle tracking and in situ imaging of atomic systems. Here, we report on measurements in the far field that show spatial quantum correlations in single images of bright twin beams with ${10}^{8}$ photons in a 1-$\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$ pulse using an electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera. A four-wave mixing process in hot rubidium atoms is used to generate narrowband, bright pulsed twin beams of light. Owing to momentum conservation in this process, the twin beams are momentum correlated, which leads to spatial quantum correlations in the far field. We show around 2 dB of spatial quantum noise reduction with respect to the shot-noise limit. The spatial squeezing is present over a large range of total number of photons in the pulsed twin beams.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.053849

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Spatial quantum correlations in the transverse degree of freedom promise to enhance optical resolution, image detection, and quantum communications through parallel quantum information encoding. In particular, the ability to observe these spatial quantum correlations in a single shot will enable such enhancements in applications that require real-time imaging, such as particle tracking and in situ imaging of atomic systems. Here, we report on measurements in the far field that show spatial quantum correlations in single images of bright twin beams with 108{10}^{8}108 photons in a 1-\ensuremathμs\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}\ensuremathμs pulse using an electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera. A four-wave mixing process in hot rubidium atoms is used to generate narrowband, bright pulsed twin beams of light. Owing to momentum conservation in this process, the twin beams are momentum correlated, which leads to spatial quantum correlations in the far field. We show around 2 dB of spatial quantum noise reduction with respect to the shot-noise limit. The spatial squeezing is present over a large range of total number of photons in the pulsed twin beams.
The observation of spatial quantum noise reduction, or spatial squeezing, with a large number of photons can lead to a significant advantage in quantum imaging and quantum metrology due to the scaling of the signal-to-noise ratio with the number of photons. Here we present a systematic study of the limiting factors that play a role on the measurement of spatial squeezing with an electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD) camera in the limit of bright quantum states of light generated with a four-wave mixing process in an atomic vapor cell. We detect a total number of photons per beam of the order 108{10}^{8}108 in $1\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$ pulses, which corresponds to a photon flux per beam of the order of 1014{10}^{14}1014 photons per second. We then investigate the role of different parameters, such as cell temperature, pump power, laser detunings, scattered pump background noise, and timing sequences for the image acquisition with the EMCCD camera, on the level of spatial squeezing. We identify critical parameters to obtain an optimum squeezing level and demonstrate that for bright beams it is essential to acquire images at a rate fast enough to overcome the effect of classical technical noise.
Electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device cameras (EMCCDs) have been used to observe quantum noise reductions in beams of light in the transverse spatial degree of freedom. For the quantum noise reduction in the temporal domain, 'bucket detectors,' usually composed of photodiodes with operational amplifiers, are used to register the intensity fluctuations in beams of light within the detectors' bandwidth. Here, we report on measurements of the temporal quantum noise reduction in bright twin beams using an EMCCD camera. The four-wave mixing process in an atomic rubidium vapor cell is used to generate the bright twin beams of light. We observe ∼ 25% of temporal quantum noise reduction with respect to the shot-noise limit in images captured by the EMCCD camera. The temporal images captured by our technique are potentially important in obtaining dynamical information on evolving systems.
We present a workbench for the study of real-time quantum imaging by measuring the frame-by-frame quantum noise reduction of multi-spatial-mode twin beams generated by four wave mixing in Rb vapor. Exploiting the multiple spatial modes of this squeezed light source, we utilize spatial light modulators to selectively pass macropixels of quantum correlated modes from each of the twin beams to a high quantum efficiency balanced detector. In low-light-level imaging applications, the ability to measure the quantum correlations between individual spatial modes and macropixels of spatial modes with a single pixel camera will facilitate compressive quantum imaging with sensitivity below the photon shot noise limit.
Quantum correlations in the spatial domain hold great promise for applications in quantum imaging, quantum cryptography and quantum information processing, owing to the infinite dimensionality of the associated Hilbert space. Here, we present a theoretical investigation, complemented by experimental measurements, of the propagation dynamics of the spatial quantum correlations in bright structured twin beams generated via a four-wave mixing process in a double-ΛΛΛ configuration in atomic vapor. We derive an analytical expression describing the evolution of the spatial quantum correlation distribution from the near field to the far field. To qualitatively support the theoretical predictions, we perform experiments measuring intensity-difference noise between different spatial subregions of the twin beams as they propagate from the near field to the far field. The presence of quantum correlations is manifested as squeezing in the intensity difference noise measurement. With a Gaussian pump, we observe localized correlations in the near field and localized anti-correlations in the far field. In contrast, with a structured Laguerre-Gaussian pump, there is a transition from localized correlations in the near field to delocalized correlations in the far field. The present results offer valuable insights into the fundamental behavior of spatial quantum correlations and open possibilities for potential applications in quantum information, quantum imaging and sensing.
Quantum states of light with multiple spatial modes are fundamental for quantum imaging and parallel quantum information processing. Thus, their characterization, which can be achieved through measurements of the coherence area, is an important area of research. We present a comparative study between different measurement techniques for the coherence area of bright entangled twin beams of light. The first one is a direct measurement based on correlation measurements between spatial intensity fluctuations of the twin beams while the second one is based on a noise analysis of different spatial regions in the temporal domain. We generate the bright entangled twin beams with a four-wave mixing process in a hot rubidium vapor cell and capture images of the twin beams with an electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera. We show that the time domain measurements, which provides a significantly less complicated measurement scheme, provides an estimate of the size of the coherence area of the same order of magnitude as the direct measurement done in the spatial domain.
Abstract Spatial entanglement is at the heart of quantum enhanced imaging applications and high-dimensional quantum information protocols. In particular, for imaging and sensing applications, quantum states with a macroscopic number of photons are needed to provide a real advantage over the classical state-of-the-art. We demonstrate the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox in its original position and momentum form with bright twin beams of light by showing the presence of EPR spatial (position–momentum) entanglement. An electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera is used to record images of the bright twin beams in the near and far field regimes to achieve an apparent violation of the uncertainty principle by more than an order of magnitude, which remains statistically significant even in the limit of a small number of images. We further show that the presence of quantum correlations in the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom leads to spatial squeezing of the bright twin beams in both the near and far fields. This provides another verification of the spatial entanglement and points to the presence of hyperentanglement in the bright twin beams.