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Physical Review Letters

Quantum Statistics of the Squeezed Vacuum by Measurement of the Density Matrix in the Number State Representation

Stephan Schiller, Gerd Breitenbach, Silvania F. Pereira, T. Müller, J. Mlynek

Published Sep 30, 1996• 231 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report the reconstruction of the quantum state of squeezed vacuum generated by a continuous-wave optical parametric amplifier. Homodyne detection and tomographic reconstruction methods were used to obtain the density matrix in the Fock (number state) representation. The photon number distribution exhibits odd-even oscillations, a manifestation of the photon pair production in the second-order nonlinear medium.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.77.2933

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States with explicit quantum character, such as squeezed vacuum and bright squeezed light, as well as coherent states and incoherent superpositions of coherent states were generated and analysed by tomographical methods. Wigner functions, photon-number distributions, density matrices and phase distributions were reconstructed with high accuracy. Features such as photon number oscillations, sub-Poissonian and super-Poissonian photon statistics, bifurcations of the phase distribution, and loss of coherence were observed, demonstrating the usefulness of quantum state reconstruction as an analysing tool in quantum optics experiments.

Journal of Modern Optics•Nov 1, 1997•44 citations
We report the reconstruction of the quantum state of squeezed vacuum generated by a continuous-wave optical parametric amplifier. Homodyne detection and tomographic reconstruction methods were used to obtain the density matrix in the Fock (number state) representation. The photon number distribution exhibits odd-even oscillations, a manifestation of the photon pair production in the second-order nonlinear medium.
The squeezed light field is a kind of important continuous variable quantum resource.It has wide applications in precision measurement and quantum information processing.Quantum storage is the foundations of quantum repeater and long distance quantum communication,and alkali metal atoms are an ideal quantum storage medium due to long ground state coherent time. With the rapid development of quantum storage technology in atomic medium,the preparation of the squeezed light which resonates with alkali metal atoms has become one of the research hotspots in the field of quantum information.In this paper,we report the generation of squeezed vacuum at 795 nm (resonant on the rubidium D1 transition line) by using an optical parametric oscillation based on a periodically poled KTiOPO4 crystal. The generated squeezed light field is detected by a balanced homodyne detector,and the squeezing of-3 dB and anti-squeezing of 5.8 dB are observed at a pump power of 45 mW.By using a maximum likelihood estimation,the density matrix of the squeezed light field is reconstructed.The time-domain signals from the balanced homodyne detector are collected to acquire the noise distribution of the squeezed light under different phase angles.The likelihood function is established for the measured quadrature components.An identity matrix is chosen as an initial density matrix,and the density matrix of the squeezed field is obtained through an iterative algorithm.The diagonal elements of the density matrix denote the photon number distribution,which includes not only even photon number states but also odd photon number states.The occurrence of odd photon number states mainly comes from the system losses and the imperfect quantum efficiency of detector.The Wigner function in phase space is calculated through the density matrix,and the maximum value of the Wigner function is 0.309.The standard deviation of the squeezed component is 64.4% of that of the vacuum state,corresponding to the squeezing degree of-3.8 dB.The standard deviation of the anti-squeezing component is 1.64 times that of the vacuum state,corresponding to the anti-squeezing degree of 4.3 dB.We theoretically calculate the photon number distribution and the Wigner function of the vacuum squeezed field,and compare the results obtained by theoretical calculation with those obtained by maximum likelihood reconstruction.The probability of vacuum state|0 obtained by maximum likelihood reconstruction is greater,and the probability of photon number state|n(n=1,2,) is smaller than the corresponding theoretical calculation results.From the theoretical calculation,the maximum value of Wigner function is 0.231,and the short axis and long axis of noise range deduced from the contours of the Wigner function are larger than the results from the maximum likelihood reconstruction.The possible reasons for the discrepancy are as follows. 1) The phase scanning is nonuniform during the measurement of the quadrature components.2) The low-frequency electronic noise is not completely filtered out in the datum acquisition process.3) The datum points of measured quadrature components are not enough.In conclusion,we produce a vacuum squeezed field of 795 nm,and obtain the photon number distribution and the Wigner function in phase space through maximum likelihood estimation and theoretical calculation,respectively.This work will provide an experimental basis for generating the Schrodinger cat state.
Weak squeezed vacuum light, especially resonant to the atomic transition, plays an important role in quantum storage and generation of various quantum sources. However, the general homodyne detection (HD) cannot determine weak squeezing due to the low signal to noise ratio and the limited resolution of the HD system. Here we provide an alternative method based on photon statistics measurement to determine the weak squeezing of the squeezed vacuum light generated from an optical parametric oscillator working far below the threshold. The approach is established the relationship between the squeezing parameter and the second-order degree of coherence. The theoretical analysis agrees well with the experiment results. The advantage of this method is that it provides a feasible and reliable experimental measure to determine the weak squeezing with high precision and the measurement is independent on the detection efficiency. This method can be used to measure other quantum features for various quantum states with extremely weak non-classicality.
We present the experimental approach to the determination of the Fock-States density matrix via the optical homodyne tomography. The single photon state is generated by Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion (SPDC) in a nonlinear crystal pumped by the Second Harmonic of a picosecond dye laser. The fundamental frequency of the dye-laser realizes the local oscillator for the homodyne measurement. In this paper we describe the experimental apparatus and discuss the possibility to realize the quantum tomography of the single-photon state and, in the future, of the n-photon state. The experimental determination of the field state prepared in a coherent state with different mean photon numbers is also presented.
States with explicit quantum character, such as squeezed vacuum and bright squeezed light, as well as coherent states and incoherent superpositions of coherent states were generated and analysed by tomographical methods. Wigner functions, photon-number distributions, density matrices and phase distributions were reconstructed with high accuracy. Features such as photon number oscillations, sub-Poissonian and super-Poissonian photon statistics, bifurcations of the phase distribution, and loss of coherence were observed, demonstrating the usefulness of quantum state reconstruction as an analysing tool in quantum optics experiments.