Correlations and squeezing of two-mode oscillations
ARTUR K. EKERT, P. L. Knight
In a squeezed state, the variance in one canonical variable may be suppressed below that normally associated with either the ground state or a coherent state, at the expense of an expansion in the variance of the conjugate variable. Squeezed states are usually discussed in the context of quantized light fields. The principal properties of squeezed states are demonstrated using the motion of quantum mechanical simple harmonic oscillators. The motion of a single oscillator is discussed to introduce the key concepts of squeezing, including quadrature operators, and the error contours of the Wigner function describing the quantum quasiprobability distributions in phase space of the oscillator motion. The main topic of two-mode squeezing is then addressed, in which the fluctuations in a system of two oscillators are tightly correlated. The existence of squeezing is demonstrated in normal mode coordinates representing motion of superpositions of the motion of the two oscillators. The fluctuations within a single oscillator are shown to increase when squeezing increases in the normal modes, generating thermal noise in individual mode subsystems.
American Journal of Physics•Aug 1, 1989•69 citations