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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Theory of noise minimization in direct and phase-sensitive photodetection

H. Fearn, R. Loudon, Terence J. Shepherd

Published Oct 1, 1991• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Expressions are derived for the minimum photocount variances that can be achieved in direct and phase-sensitive detection. The results apply for arbitrary quantum efficiency and integration time, and they cover both homodyne and heterodyne detection in the phase-sensitive case. Particular attention is given to the regions of operation in which the photodetection-noise figures lie below the minimum values permitted by classical theory and correspond to sub-Poissonian statistics and squeezing.

DOI
10.1364/josab.8.002218

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Expressions are derived for the minimum photocount variances that can be achieved in direct and phase-sensitive detection. The results apply for arbitrary quantum efficiency and integration time, and they cover both homodyne and heterodyne detection in the phase-sensitive case. Particular attention is given to the regions of operation in which the photodetection-noise figures lie below the minimum values permitted by classical theory and correspond to sub-Poissonian statistics and squeezing.
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The operational theory of homodyne detection by nonideal detectors, used in quantum tomography, was recently modified in order to incorporate the preamplification (before homodyne detection) of the input signal, thus enabling one to beat the handicap of the lower than 0.5 detector efficiency. In the present work we set expressions for the Mandel QQQ parameter and the signal-to-noise ratio in terms of the operational (measured) moments of the preamplified homodyne detection formalism. These quantities furnish important information on the statistical properties of the input signal field and the photocounts at the output. We illustrate the theory by considering several kinds of fields (for the input signal) and determine the effects of the preamplification on the output signal-to-noise ratios. Here we essentially verify that (i) the preamplification shifts the statistics towards the super-Poissonian limit, without jeopardizing the capacity of reconstructing a sub-Poissionan input signal, and (ii) the preamplification is more effective, i.e., the rate of increase of the signal-to-noise ratio of the output photocount is larger for low-efficiency detectors than for ideal ones.