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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

From quantum to classical: watching a single photon become a wave

Marco Bellini, Alessandro Zavatta, Silvia Viciani

Published Aug 1, 2005• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present the experimental generation of a new class of non-classical light states and their complete phase-space characterization by quantum homodyne tomography. These states are the result of the most elementary amplification process of classical light fields by a single quantum of excitation and can be generated by the process of stimulated emission of a single photon in the mode of a coherent state. Being intermediate between a single-photon Fock state and a coherent one, they offer the unique opportunity to closely follow the smooth evolution between the particle-like and the wave-like behavior of the light field and to witness the gradual change from the spontaneous to the stimulated regimes of light emission.

DOI
10.1117/12.614374

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We present the experimental generation of a new class of non-classical light states and their complete phase-space characterization by quantum homodyne tomography. These states are the result of the most elementary amplification process of classical light fields by a single quantum of excitation and can be generated by the process of stimulated emission of a single photon in the mode of a coherent state. Being intermediate between a single-photon Fock state and a coherent one, they offer the unique opportunity to closely follow the smooth evolution between the particle-like and the wave-like behavior of the light field and to witness the gradual change from the spontaneous to the stimulated regimes of light emission.
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A new class of non-classical light states has been experimentally generated and their complete phase-space characterization has been achieved by quantum homodyne tomography. Such states are produced by the action of the photon creation operator on a coherent light field and are thus the result of the elementary excitation process of a classical field by a single quantum. Being intermediate between a single-photon Fock state and a coherent one, they offer the unique opportunity to closely follow the smooth evolution between the particle-like and the wave-like behavior of the light field.
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A new class of non-classical light states has been experimentally generated and their complete phase-space characterization has been achieved by quantum homodyne tomography. Such states are produced by the action of the photon creation operator on a coherent light eld and are thus the result of the elementary excitation process of a classical eld by a single quantum. Being intermediate between a single-photon Fock state and a coherent one, they o er the unique opportunity to closely follow the smooth evolution between the particle-like and the wave-like behavior of the light eld.
When a single quantum of electromagnetic field excitation is added to the same spatiotemporal mode of a coherent state, a new field state is generated that exhibits intermediate properties between those of the two parents. Such a single-photon-added coherent state is obtained by the action of the photon creation operator on a coherent state and can thus be regarded as the result of the most elementary excitation process of a classical light field. Here we present and describe in depth the experimental realization of such states and their complete analysis by means of a novel ultrafast, time-domain, quantum homodyne tomography technique clearly revealing their nonclassical character.
Summary form only given. The single photon Fock state is one of the most fundamental states of the light field. It is highly non-classical and reveals the wave-particle duality of light most strikingly. Its marginal distributions are of non-Gaussian shape and its Wigner function exhibits a strong negativity around the origin of phase space. Although the reconstruction of the Fock state has already been performed for the motional state of trapped beryllium ions, in the optical domain this task has not been resolved so far, the main difficulty being the lack of coherent single-photon sources. We present results of applying the technique of optical homodyne tomography to the single photon Fock state prepared by conditional measurements on a photon pair produced in parametric down conversion.