Vacuum-fluctuation induced photon-photon correlations

Román Castañeda, Camilo Hurtado

Yao Jin

John Rarity, P. R. Tapster

Pasi Lähteenmäki, Gheorghe Sorin Paraoanu, Juha Hassel +1 more

The existence of vacuum fluctuations is one of the most important predictions of modern quantum field theory. In the vacuum state, fluctuations occurring at different frequencies are uncorrelated. However, if a parameter in the Lagrangian of the field is modulated by an external pump, vacuum fluctuations stimulate spontaneous downconversion processes, creating squeezing between modes symmetric with respect to half of the frequency of the pump. Here we show that by double parametric pumping of a superconducting microwave cavity, it is possible to generate another type of correlation, namely coherence between photons in separate frequency modes. The coherence correlations are tunable by the phases of the pumps and are established by a quantum fluctuation that stimulates the simultaneous creation of two photon pairs. Our analysis indicates that the origin of this vacuum-induced coherence is the absence of which-way information in the frequency space.

Gianpaolo Bei

We study in this paper the possible influence of vacuum fluctuations on photo detection and its background noise in Bell tests. We analyze its consequences on the standard statistical analysis of data showing that it is not fulfilled anymore the conventional hypothesis of a Poisson like probability density distribution of single photodetection events. We assume that vacuum fluctuations are due to real and measurable fluctuating fields, as recently confirmed experimentally, and that their non null correlations outside the light cone contribute to photon coincidence rates making them time dependent. We introduce a generalized Bell like correlation function which contains a new term due to supposed vacuum induced photon counting events. We deduce then a generalization of CH-inequality which takes in account the effect of these vacuum electric fields on detector efficiency. We predict an apparatus temperature fluctuations during photon detection which we suggest could be observed by looking for colored noise thermal emission of the photodetectors, generalizing the standard white noise prediction of C.S.L. models on wave function collapse postulate. We discuss an experimental test of this prediction, based on the idea of inducing a thermal wave on the whole quantum detectors, aimed to observe time dependent deviations from standard stationary statistical predictions of Quantum Mechanics.

Marlan O. Scully