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Physical Review A

Many-photon antibunching in generalized pair coherent states

Ching Tsung Lee

Published Feb 1, 1990• 89 citations

Abstract

Based on a classical inequality, which is a generalization by Muirhead [Proc. Edinburg Math. Soc. 21, 144 (1903)] of the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality, and the expression for factorial moments of photon numbers in the P representation, the concept of two-photon antibunching is extended to involve many photons from the same mode, or from two different modes, of the radiation field. A systematic study is carried out to examine the conditions for the existence of many-photon antibunching in pair coherent states introduced recently by Agarwal [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 5, 1940 (1988)]. It is proved analytically that the intramode antibunching always exists and that intermode antibunching occurs whenever a certain condition is satisfied by the relevant parameters; otherwise, numerical study shows that it occurs only when the eigenvalue of the pair-annihilation operator is large enough. The pair coherent states are then generalized by using a more realistic initial condition for their generation through the competition of different nonlinear processes in a two-photon medium. It is again established analytically that intramode antibunching always exists in these generalized pair coherent states; and numerical study reveals the general features of the intermode antibunching.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.41.1569

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The concept of photon antibunching as a manifestation of nonclassical character in single-mode radiation is extended to two-mode radiation. A simple criterion for the existence of nonclassical effects in two-mode radiation is established. It implies that the intermode photon bunching, rather than antibunching, can play a key role in rendering two-mode radiation nonclassical. The two-mode squeezed vacuum states are used as simple examples to illustrate the essential point of the criterion. The criterion is then used to study the nonclassical properties of two types of two-mode squeezed states. A state generated by applying the squeeze operator to the two-mode vacuum first, followed by the displacement operator, is called a two-mode coherent squeezed state. If the order of the two operators is reversed, a two-mode squeezed coherent state is obtained. It is found that the latter has a much stronger tendency to become a nonclassical state than the former, assuming that the parameters involved are all the same. A measure of nonclassical depth of radiation is adopted. It is found that, according to this measure, the effect of squeezing in making two-mode coherent squeezed states nonclassical is not monotonic. Such phenomena do not occur in squeezed coherent states.

A review is given of recent theoretical studies devoted to the problem of generating radiation fields that exhibit the opposite of the well-known bunching of photons observed in light from thermal sources, the so-called antibunching effect. It is made clear that this phenomenon reflects the corpuscular nature of light and, hence, cannot be interpreted in terms of classical electrodynamics, needing, instead, the quantum-mechanical formalism for its description. It is shown in some detail that nonlinear interaction mechanisms like multiphoton absorption and parametric three-wave interaction are suited to change the photon statistical properties of incident (in most cases coherent) light such that the output field will be endowed with antibunching properties. Special emphasis is given to the problem of correctly specifying the dimensions of the mode volume occurring in the usual single-mode treatment of the field, which is, in fact, of great practical interest, since the magnitude of the antibunching effect is determined by the inverse average number of photons contained in that volume. In a later section it is pointed out that destructive interference with a coherent reference beam provides a means of (a) effectively enhancing photon antibunching that is already present in a high-intensity field, through reduction of the intensity, and (b) transforming phase fluctuations produced in a Kerr medium into antibunching-type intensity fluctuations. On the other hand, there exists a way of directly generating light with antibunching properties, the physical mechanism being resonance fluorescence from a single atom. The main features of this technique, both theoretical and experimental, are outlined, including a discussion of the first experimental results obtained a few years ago.

This paper studies the antibunching properties of the total frequency photons generated by the atomic interaction system with N photons in the coherent state, the even-odd nonlinear coherent state and the squeezing state. On the basis of the criteria for the existence of high-order antibunching, we give an analytic expression for the general high-order antibunching of the system of N photons of total frequency at the input. The research results show that when the input modes are all in a coherent state, there is absolutely no antibunching property. In the case of input modes in the single-mode coherent state, there will be no antibunching property, but as long as at least one photon in the additional nonclassical state is present, the antibunching property becomes evident when we choose value of amplitude, phase angle and suitable the degree of squeezing. Investigation of antibunching properties according the nonlinear even coherent state or the nonlinear odd coherent state has similar results.

We examine the nonclassical properties of the pair coherent states defined as the simultaneous eigenstates of the operator that annihilates photons in pairs and of the operator that gives the relative occupation number in the two modes. We show that fields in such states have remarkable quantum features such as sub-Poissonian statistics correlations in the number fluctuations, squeezing, and violations of Cauchy–Schwarz inequalities. We show how such pair coherent states can be generated by the competition of different nonlinear processes in a two-photon medium. The quantam features occur not only in the transient domain but also survive in the steady state because of the balance between nonlinear processes.