A quantum description of the beam splitter

P. Kucera

A quantum-mechanical description of the phase shifters, retarders, mirrors and beam splitters is given in the paper. The description is then applied on two types of states. On a coherent state, a classical-like state, and on a number state, hence the strict quantum state. The quantum description of a beam splitter can be found in the literature. However the description does not treat with the polarization concept. The paper is aimed to introduce quantum description of an arbitrary oriented retarder and give a description of a beam splitter which treats with the polarization.

Franck Laloë, William J. Mullin

H. Fearn, R. Loudon

Sudhakar Prasad, Marlan O. Scully, W. Martienssen

The lossless beam splitter is classically well understood. The purpose of this work is to enable one to describe the action of a lossless plane-parallel beam splitter on an incident light beam in purely quantum-mechanical terms. Such a description may be obtained in terms of a unitary transformation that connects the incoming radiation-field operator to the outgoing one. This transformation, which we shall derive and discuss here, provides an elegant means to address issues and concepts that are intrinsically quantum-mechanical.

Ray LaPierre

A. E. Ivanova, Sergey A. Chivilikhin, Artur V. Gleim

Quantum random number generators based on vacuum fluctuations produce truly random numbers that can be used for applications are requiring a high degree of randomness.A beam splitter with two inputs and two outputs is normally used in these systems.In this paper, mathematical descriptions were obtained for the use of such beam splitter and fiber Y-splitter in quantum random number generation systems with homodyne detection.We derived equations which allowed us to estimate the impact of the scheme parameters' imperfection upon measurement results.We also obtained mathematical expressions, demonstrating the equivalence of quantum descriptions for a Y-splitter and a beam splitter with two inputs.