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Physical Review Letters

Quantum theory of optical feedback via homodyne detection

Howard M. Wiseman, Gerard J Milburn

Published Feb 1, 1993• 622 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a quantum theory of feedback in which the homodyne photocurrent alters the dynamics of the source cavity. To the nonlinear stochastic (Ito) evolution of the conditioned system state we add a feedback term linear in the instantaneous stochastic (Stratonovich) photocurrent. Averaging over the photocurrent gives a feedbackk master equation which has the desired driftlike term, plus a diffusionlike term. We apply the model to phase locking a regularly pumped laser, and show that under ideal conditions the noise spectra of the output light exhibit perfect squeezing on resonance.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.70.548

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We present a quantum theory of feedback in which the homodyne photocurrent alters the dynamics of the source cavity. To the nonlinear stochastic (Ito) evolution of the conditioned system state we add a feedback term linear in the instantaneous stochastic (Stratonovich) photocurrent. Averaging over the photocurrent gives a feedbackk master equation which has the desired driftlike term, plus a diffusionlike term. We apply the model to phase locking a regularly pumped laser, and show that under ideal conditions the noise spectra of the output light exhibit perfect squeezing on resonance.
We present the quantum theory of optical cavity feedback mediated by homodyne detection, with an arbitrary time delay. We apply this theory to a system with nonclassical dynamics, a sub-Poissonian pumped laser. By using the feedback to phase lock the laser it is possible to produce output light which exhibits perfect quadrature squeezing on resonance, rather than just sub-Poissonian intensity statistics. However, we also show that feedback mediated by homodyne detection (or any other extracavity measurement) cannot produce nonclassical light unless the cavity dynamics can do so without feedback. Furthermore, in systems which already exhibit squeezing, such feedback can only degrade the squeezing in the output. With feedback mediated by an intracavity measurement, these theorems do not apply. We show that an (admittedly unrealistic) intracavity quantum nondemolition quadrature measurement allows arbitrary squeezing to be produced by controlling the amplitude of a coherent driving field.
All-optical feedback can be effected by putting the output of a source cavity through a Faraday isolator and into a second cavity which is coupled to the source cavity by a nonlinear crystal. If the driven cavity is heavily damped, then it can be adiabatically eliminated and a master equation or quantum Langevin equation derived for the first cavity alone. This is done for an input bath in an arbitrary state, and for an arbitrary nonlinear coupling. If the intercavity coupling involves only the intensity (or one quadrature) of the driven cavity, then the effect on the source cavity is identical to that which can be obtained from electro-optical feedback using direct (or homodyne) detection. If the coupling involves both quadratures, this equivalence no longer holds and a coupling linear in the source amplitude can produce a nonclassical state in the source cavity. The analogous electro-optic scheme using heterodyne detection introduces extra noise which prevents the production of nonclassical light. Unlike the electro-optical case, the all-optical feedback loop has an output beam (reflected from the second cavity). We show that this may be squeezed, even if the source cavity remains in a classical state.
We examine the quantum-limited behavior of an electro-optical intensity feedback loop and present a simple theory and experimental data showing excellent agreement. We show that, although the light incident upon the in-loop detector may be sub-Poissonian, this light has unique properties different from those of a freely propagating beam of intensity squeezed light. We support this by presenting the results of homodyne measurements of the phase noise of light extracted from the loop. The utility of the in-loop field is discussed, and it is shown that in all cases in which linear optical components are used, no advantage in signal-to-noise ratio is gained by taking measurements by using this light rather than a coherent source. We also discuss effects seen in the extracted or out-of-loop light. We demonstrate the existence of, and derive an expression for, an optimum gain for suppressing low-level classical noise. Conversely, in the high-gain limit, we demonstrate that the extra noise seen in the out-of-loop photocurrent that is due to the feedback process is expressible purely in terms of the mean photocurrents involved. Lastly, we introduce the novel concept of using an intensity feedback loop in conjunction with a squeezed source and show that the feedback loop has the capability of electronically transferring squeezing from one light beam to another.
Quantum feedback control is the control of the dynamics of a quantum system by feeding back (in real time) the results of monitoring that system. For systems with linear dynamics, the control problem is amenable to exact analysis. In these cases, the quantum system is equivalent to a stochastic system of classical phase-space variables with linear drift and constant diffusion, and with a measured current (e.g. a homodyne photocurrent) linear in the system variables. However, the classical evolution is constrained in order to represent valid quantum evolution. We quantify this in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI) relating the drift and diffusion (a sort of zero temperature fluctuation-dissipation theorem), and another LMI for the covariance matrix of the possible conditioned states (i.e. under all possible monitoring schemes consistent with the master equation). For manipulable systems (i.e. where the experimenter has arbitrary control over the parameters in a Hamiltonian linear in the system variables) the covariance of the conditioned state is all that is needed to calculate the effectiveness of the feedback. In this case the double optimization problem reduces to a semidefinite program, which can be solved efficiently in general. We illustrate this with an example drawn from quantum optics.
The detection of squeezed optical fields generated by intracavity nonlinear-optical interactions is described. The relationship between quantum-statistical properties of the cavity mode and those of the field at a detector placed outside the cavity discussed. The detected field is composed of a source field from the cavity plus a free external field. The free field couples weakly to the cavity so that it is correlated with the source field. The photocurrent spectrum in optical homodyne detection is calculated, and the spectrum of squeezing is defined. This spectrum can be calculated entirely in terms of intracavity fields without requiring knowledge of the correlations between source and free-field contributions in the cavity output. This follows from an explicitly normally ordered, time-ordered treatment of the photodetection problem. Contrasting earlier treatments of photodetection for squeezed fields, in a normally ordered approach, shot noise arises naturally from the self-correlation of photocurrent for pulses. The derived spectrum is converted into nonnormally ordered, non-time-ordered form to recover the results of these earlier treatments and their interpretation of shot noise in terms of local-oscillator quantum noise, signal and quantum noise, and detector-efficiency quantum noise.