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Physical Review Letters

Measuring Coherence while Observing Noise

Opher Kinrot, Ilya Sh. Averbukh, Yehiam Prior

Published Nov 20, 1995• 64 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a new approach to the measurement of coherence. By monitoring the quantum interference fluctuations in the population excited by a pair of time-delayed, randomly phased pulses, it is possible to extract information on internal dynamics, energy level splittings, and characteristic coherence decay times of the medium. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the measurement of phase relaxation and doublet separation in atomic potassium. The principle of coherence observation by interference noise is very general, is shown to be robust and with inherent time resolution of a few optical cycles, and is proposed as an alternative to many interferometric applications.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.75.3822

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We present a new approach to the measurement of coherence. By monitoring the quantum interference fluctuations in the population excited by a pair of time-delayed, randomly phased pulses, it is possible to extract information on internal dynamics, energy level splittings, and characteristic coherence decay times of the medium. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the measurement of phase relaxation and doublet separation in atomic potassium. The principle of coherence observation by interference noise is very general, is shown to be robust and with inherent time resolution of a few optical cycles, and is proposed as an alternative to many interferometric applications.
Optical quantum metrology uses specially-prepared states of light to probe sensitive samples. Choosing a suitable probe state allows one to extract more information per probe photon about an unknown parameter than is possible using any classical technique. In effect, these techniques improve the sensitivity of the measurement whenever the number of probe photons is constrained in some way. This thesis presents experimental and theoretical results on the use of pairs of time-frequency entangled photons in precision measurements. It begins with an overview of necessary background knowledge about quantum optics and quantum information. This is followed by a theoretical discussion on the estimation of a single delay using two-photon interference. We show that constraints on the probe photon's bandwidth complicate the measurement problem, requiring suitable optimization of the two-photon quantum state to avoid losing precision. We then consider the use of two-photon interference for linear spectroscopic measurements. Linear spectroscopy relates the absorption and phase spectrum of a sample to unknown electronic parameters. We describe a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrating that two-photon interferometric spectroscopy can be used for simultaneously measurement of both absorption and phase. This is followed by an information-theoretic discussion of the precision of this technique. For low losses, we show that the method provides phase sensitivity similar to classical interferometry while approaching the optimal absorption precision of any possible measurement. If the absorption and phase values are both related to a single unknown parameter, then our technique provides improved sensitivity to this parameter compared to both classical measurements and other quantum techniques in the presence of realistic levels of loss. We conclude with a discussion of quantum-optical coherence tomography, which is a two-photon interferometric method for determining the material structure of a sample. We present an ongoing experiment which aims to apply the method to tissue-like samples, where the quantum measurement is limited by a poor signal-to-noise ratio. Preliminary results demonstrate that this noise can be largely reduced by suitable frequency-domain filtering. This allows us to precisely determine the position of a scattering center using a few hundred detected photon pairs despite the presence of large amounts of noise. We follow this with a theoretical discussion of signal artifacts which are known to complicate the measured interferogram. We show these artifacts are due to a distinct interferometric effect, which can be distinguished from the signal of interest using the relative time delay between detected photons. We conclude with a brief discussion on possible techniques for artifact removal.
We describe a detector that measures the mutual coherence of two optical fields directly using quantum interference, free from photon noise of the individual irradiances. Our approach utilizes Raman transition in an atomic system where the state evolution is driven by the mutual coherence of the fields interacting with the atoms. Feedback control is used to balance the interaction of the fields being characterized, providing a measure of the mutual coherence. We show that the sensitivity of the coherence measurement can be enhanced significantly above that of conventional interferometric methods when the mutual coherence of the two fields is weak.
The optical response of a two-site system driven by a pair of optical pulses in an interferometric set up has been studied theoretically by applying the density operator formalism. The one-exciton approach is taken for modeling two coupled two-level systems (TLS), the external field is presented semiclassically and bath-induced dissipative processes are included. In the δ-pulse limit the population of the excited state has been formulated to the lowest order perturbation expansion in the external field. In the limit of slow luminescence the interferogram of time-integrated total fluorescence has been calculated for pulses with constant relative phase. For phase-randomized pulses the variance of the correlated fluorescence signal as a function of the pulse delay allows direct interrogation of coherent transients and dephasing processes. Our analysis follows the principle of coherence observation by interference noise, COIN [O. Kinrot, I. Sh. Averbukh, and Y. Prior, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3822 (1995)], but is a generalization of this concept to expand on electronically interacting TLS. The theoretical results demonstrate that analysis of fluorescence interference fluctuations may provide a powerful diagnostic tool for probing the initial quantum coherence of energy transfer, i.e., excitation oscillations by employing fs-fluorescence correlation measurements in stable interferometric configurations.
We consider temporally integrating interferometric measurements and their relation to the coherence properties of nonstationary light. We find that performing such experiments as a function of time delay is equivalent to spectrally resolving the interference patterns, and time-domain coherence information can be obtained from field autocorrelation only if the source is of the Schell-model type. In an analogy to autocorrelation, we introduce field cross-correlation, which can be used to determine the complete complex field of unknown signal pulses if suitable probe pulses are available. We demonstrate our findings with simulated supercontinuum and free-electron laser ensembles, and discuss the prospect of carrying out experiments.
Quantum Electrodynamics predicts that the vacuum must behave as a nonlinear optical medium: the vacuum optical index should increase when it is stressed by intense electromagnetic fields. The DeLLight (Deflection of Light by Light) project aims to measure it by using intense and ultra-short laser pulses. The experiment uses a Sagnac interferometer to amplify the tiny deflection signal of a low-intensity probe pulse crossing the vacuum refractive-index gradient produced by an external high-intensity pump pulse. The measurement of the amplified signal by a CCD camera requires a high spatial resolution, which is limited by the ultimate quantum noise of the CCD. However, interferometric phase noise induced by the mechanical vibrations of the interferometer is also amplified and degrades spatial resolution. To overcome this, we propose a new method named High-Frequency Phase Noise Suppression (HFPNS), based on the addition of a delayed replica (5 ns) of the probe pulse. The delayed pulse, which is not affected by the pump but is subject to the same vibration noise, enables offline subtraction of correlated phase noise. In this work, we present an experimental proof-of-concept on a prototype interferometer operating with a limited amplification factor (A≃25\mathcal{A}\simeq25A≃25), about 10 times smaller than the required value of the final experiment. We have succeeded in reducing phase noise by a factor of 40, resulting in a residual noise level 2.3 times higher than the expected quantum noise. The residual noise is linked to delay-line instabilities and incident beam pointing fluctuations present during these tests. This result validates HFPNS as a robust method for future quantum-noise-limited interferometric measurements of vacuum optical nonlinearity, though additional stabilization and higher interferometric amplification are still needed.