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arXiv:1909.01546 · Laser & Photonics Review

Zonal Reconstruction of Photonic Wavefunction via Momentum Weak Measurement

Mu Yang, Ya Xiao, Yu‐Wei Liao, Zhenghao Liu, Xiao‐Ye Xu, Jin‐Shi Xu, Chuan‐Feng Li, Guang‐Can Guo

Published Apr 3, 2020• 31 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Direct measurement of wavefunctions has attracted great interest and many different methods have been developed. However, the precision of current techniques is limited by the use of Fourier transform lenses. These measurements require to shear cut the part of particles with momentum , which greatly restricts the efficiency and application of the approaches. Here, a method to directly measure 2D photonic wavefunctions is proposed and experimentally demonstrated by combining the momentum weak measurement technology and the zonal wavefront restoration algorithm. Both the Gaussian and Laguerre–Gaussian wavefunctions are experimentally well reconstructed. This method avoids using the Fourier lens and post selection on the momentum . This is further applied to measure wavefronts with ultra‐high spatial frequency and achieve a pixel resolution, which is difficult for traditional Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensing technologies. This work extends the ability of quantum measurement techniques and will be useful for high‐resolution wavefront sensing.

DOI
10.1002/lpor.201900251

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Abstract Direct measurement of wavefunctions has attracted great interest and many different methods have been developed. However, the precision of current techniques is limited by the use of Fourier transform lenses. These measurements require to shear cut the part of particles with momentum , which greatly restricts the efficiency and application of the approaches. Here, a method to directly measure 2D photonic wavefunctions is proposed and experimentally demonstrated by combining the momentum weak measurement technology and the zonal wavefront restoration algorithm. Both the Gaussian and Laguerre–Gaussian wavefunctions are experimentally well reconstructed. This method avoids using the Fourier lens and post selection on the momentum . This is further applied to measure wavefronts with ultra‐high spatial frequency and achieve a pixel resolution, which is difficult for traditional Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensing technologies. This work extends the ability of quantum measurement techniques and will be useful for high‐resolution wavefront sensing.
The task of wavefront sensing is to measure the phase of the optical field. Here, we demonstrate that the widely used Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor detects the weak value of transverse momentum, usually achieved by the method of quantum weak measurement. We extend its input states to partially coherent states and compare it with the weak measurement wavefront sensor, which has a higher spatial resolution but a smaller dynamic range. Since weak values are commonly used in investigating fundamental quantum physics and quantum metrology, our work would find essential applications in these fields.
With an extremely high dimensionality, the spatial degree of freedom of entangled photons is a key tool for quantum foundation and applied quantum techniques. To fully utilize the feature, the essential task is to experimentally characterize the multiphoton spatial wave function including the entangled amplitude and phase information at different evolutionary stages. However, there is no effective method to measure it. Quantum state tomography is costly, and quantum holography requires additional references. Here, we introduce quantum Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing to perform efficient and reference-free measurement of the biphoton spatial wave function. The joint probability distribution of photon pairs at the back focal plane of a microlens array is measured and used for amplitude extraction and phase reconstruction. In the experiment, we observe that the biphoton amplitude correlation becomes weak while phase correlation shows up during free-space propagation. Our work is a crucial step in quantum physical and adaptive optics and paves the way for characterizing quantum optical fields with high-order correlations or topological patterns.
It is of great importance to determine an unknown quantum state for fundamental studies of quantum mechanics, yet it is still difficult to characterize systems of large dimensions in practice. Although the scan-free direct measurement approach based on a weak measurement scheme was proposed to measure a high-dimensional photonic state, how weak the interaction should be to give a correct estimation remains unclear. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a technique that measures a high-dimensional quantum state with the combination of scan-free measurement and direct strong measurement. The procedure involves sequential strong measurement, in which case no approximation is made similarly to the conventional direct weak measurement. We use this method to measure a transverse state of a photon with effective dimensionality of 65000 without the time-consumed scanning process. Furthermore, the high fidelity of the result and the simplicity of the experimental apparatus show that our approach can be readily used to measure the complex field of a beam in diverse applications such as wavefront sensing and quantitative phase imaging.
The wave function is the cornerstone of quantum theory, and various techniques have been proposed for its direct measurement. The reconstruction of the wave function can be achieved by utilizing the real and imaginary components of momentum weak value, which correspond to amplitude and phase differentiation, respectively. However, these methods are limited in their applicability to wave functions with large phase gradients due to the weak coupling condition, which is a fundamental constraint. In this paper, we propose a method for reconstructing wave functions with large phase gradients based on optical differentiation through weak measurement. We have developed a more generalized theory of phase differentiation and implemented a common optical path and fast measurement for wave functions with large phase gradients. The experimental detection of wave functions with varying phase gradients has validated the reliability of our method. This work expands the range of applications for weak measurement while retaining its high resolution and sensitivity advantages, particularly in the field of wavefront sensing.
We present a method of photon orbital angular momentum selection at very low light levels using spatial interference between a strong local oscillator field and a weak beam. By using Fourier phase recovery techniques familiar in classical interferometry, we can experimentally obtain a quantum-limited Q distribution with a standard deviation consistent with the quantum noise floor. Further, by projecting the complex Fourier peak on a Laguerre–Gauss basis, we can distinguish states of different orbital angular momentum with high fidelity for small numbers of counts per acquisition frame. The noise equivalent photoelectron count for this measurement is 10 − 5 counts per pixel per frame.
Wavefunction is a fundamental concept of quantum theory. Recent studies have shown surprisingly that wavefunction can be directly reconstructed via the measurement of weak value. The weak value based direct wavefunction reconstruction not only gives the operational meaning of wavefunction, but also provides the possibility of realizing holographic imaging with a totally new quantum approach. Here, we review the basic background knowledge of weak value based direct wavefunction reconstruction combined with recent experimental demonstrations. The main purpose of this work focuses on the idea of holographic imaging via direct wavefunction reconstruction. Since research on this topic is still in its early stage, we hope that this work can attract interest in the field of traditional holographic imaging. In addition, the wavefunction holographic imaging may find important applications in quantum information science.