Generation of pulsed squeezed light in a mode-locked optical parametric oscillator

曲文艳 QU Wen-yan, 宋家争 Song Jia-zheng, 冯飞 FENG Fei +2 more

Orhan Aytür, Prem Kumar

We report pulsed squeezed-light generation by means of an optical parametric downconverter that is pumped by the second harmonic of a mode-locked Q-switched laser. Using the fundamental beam of the laser as a local oscillator, we observe 2-dB squeezing for a parametric gain of 2.0. This local oscillator, however, is nonoptimal because of its spatiotemporal mode mismatch with the squeezed mode generated by the downconverter. We describe an experiment in which a matched local oscillator is generated with the use of an optical parametric amplifier that is pumped by the same laser as is the downconverter. In this case, 2-dB squeezing is observed for a parametric gain of 1.5. The present experimental setup is limited by the uncontrollable phase fluctuations that prohibit us from making squeezing measurements at higher parametric gains.

Katsuyuki Kasai

Ulrik L. Andersen, B. C. Buchler, Ping Koy Lam +3 more

Hongyu Liu, Chen Li, Liu Ling +4 more

We demonstrate experimentally the short pulse amplitude squeezed light from a singly resonant synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (SPOPO). The SPOPO operates in the frequency degenerate case and below threshold, with using a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate crystal. The pump laser is the second harmonic of a ultrashort mode-locked femtosecond pulse at 850 nm. The reduction of quantum noise of 2.58 dB is obtained experimentally. The squeezing extent is deduced to be 4.48 dB.

Yoshitaka Taguchi, Kenichi Oguchi, Zicong Xu +5 more

In high-precision optical measurements, squeezed vacuum states are a promising resource for reducing the shot noise. To utilize a squeezed vacuum, it is important to lock the phase of the local oscillator (LO) to the squeezed light. The coherent control sideband (CCSB) scheme has been established for the precise phase locking, while the previous CCSB scheme was designed for the squeezed vacuum generated with an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Thus the previous CCSB scheme is not applicable to squeezing by a single-pass optical parametric amplifier (OPA), which is attractive for generating broadband squeezed vacuum states. In this study, we propose a variant of CCSB scheme, which is applicable to the squeezing by single-pass OPA. In this scheme, we inject pump light and frequency-shifted signal light into an OPA crystal in the same way as the previous CCSB scheme. The parametric process in the OPA crystal generates a squeezed vacuum, amplifies the signal light, generates an idler light, and causes the pump depletion reflecting the interference of the amplified signal light and the idler light. Through the lock-in detection of the pump depletion, we can phase-lock the injected signal light to the pump light. Then, after the heterodyne detection of the signal and the idler light, we get the error signal of LO and realize the precise phase locking of LO to the squeezed quadrature. We show the feasibility of the proposed scheme by deriving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the modulated pump signal. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed scheme on pulsed squeezing by a single-pass OPA.