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Science

Probing Quantum Commutation Rules by Addition and Subtraction of Single Photons to/from a Light Field

Valentina Parigi, Alessandro Zavatta, Myungshik Kim, Marco Bellini

Published Sep 27, 2007• 462 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The possibility of arbitrarily "adding" and "subtracting" single photons to and from a light field may give access to a complete engineering of quantum states and to fundamental quantum phenomena. We experimentally implemented simple alternated sequences of photon creation and annihilation on a thermal field and used quantum tomography to verify the peculiar character of the resulting light states. In particular, as the final states depend on the order in which the two actions are performed, we directly observed the noncommutativity of the creation and annihilation operators, one of the cardinal concepts of quantum mechanics, at the basis of the quantum behavior of light. These results represent a step toward the full quantum control of a field and may provide new resources for quantum information protocols.

DOI
10.1126/science.1146204

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The possibility of arbitrarily "adding" and "subtracting" single photons to and from a light field may give access to a complete engineering of quantum states and to fundamental quantum phenomena. We experimentally implemented simple alternated sequences of photon creation and annihilation on a thermal field and used quantum tomography to verify the peculiar character of the resulting light states. In particular, as the final states depend on the order in which the two actions are performed, we directly observed the noncommutativity of the creation and annihilation operators, one of the cardinal concepts of quantum mechanics, at the basis of the quantum behavior of light. These results represent a step toward the full quantum control of a field and may provide new resources for quantum information protocols.
We have realized experimental schemes to implement the action of single photon creation and annihilation operators on single‐mode light fields. In particular, we apply alternated sequences of creation and annihilation operators to completely classical and fully incoherent thermal light states. By verifying that the resulting states depend on the order in which the two quantum operators are applied, we provide the most direct experimental verification of the non‐commutation of bosonic creation and annihilation operators.
We have recently realized experimental schemes to implement the action of single-photon creation and annihilation operators onto completely classical and fully incoherent thermal light states (Parigi et al 2007 Science 317 1890). By applying alternated sequences of the creation and annihilation operators we observed that the resulting states depend on the order in which the two quantum operators are applied, thus obtaining the most direct experimental test of non-commutativity. Here we provide an extensive and detailed discussion of the main experimental issues related to the realization of these schemes.
The recent development of experimental techniques to implement the creation and the annihilation operators in the optical domain has found great interest for quantum information manipulation and processing. Quantum states of light obtained by the application of alternated sequences of the creation and annihilation operators a^†\hat{a}^\daggera^† and a^\hat{a}a^ to a thermal state of light depend on the order in which the two operations are performed. The non-commutativity of the bosonic operators, a^a^†≠a^†a^≠1\hat{a}\hat{a}^\dagger\ne \hat{a}^\dagger\hat{a}\ne 1a^a^†=a^†a^=1, has been experimentally verified in terms of density matrixes and Wigner functions, which are reconstructed by quantum homodyne tomography. Recently, a setup has been proposed to directly and completely prove the bosonic commutation relation where a single-photon interferometer is used to create coherent superpositions of two alternated sequences of operators, such as [a^a^†±a^†a^][\hat{a}\hat{a}^\dagger \pm \hat{a}^\dagger\hat{a}][a^a^†±a^†a^]. Some of the latest experimental results are discussed.
We report the generation and the tomographic analysis of novel quantum states of light generated by the controlled addition and subtraction of single photons to and from a classical and fully incoherent thermal light field. Time-domain quantum tomography is used to thoroughly investigate the character of the resulting states. Several different criteria are employed to test and quantify nonclassicality of photon-added thermal states, while the peculiar features concerning the mean photon number of photon-subtracted thermal states are clearly observed.
We report the generation and the tomographic analysis of novel quantum states of light generated by the controlled addition and subtraction of single photons to and from a classical and fully incoherent thermal light field. Time-domain quantum tomography is used to thoroughly investigate the character of the resulting states. Several different criteria are employed to test and quantify nonclassicality of photon-added thermal states, while the peculiar features concerning the mean photon number of photon-subtracted thermal states are clearly observed.