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SPIE Quantum Nanophotonics

Quantum state reconstruction and photon number statistics for low dimensional semiconductor opto-electronic devices

U. Woggon, Fabian Boehm, Nina Owschimikow, Nicolai B. Grosse, Mirco Kolarczik, Alexander W. Achtstein, Bastian Herzog

Published Nov 14, 2017• 1 citation

Abstract

Quantum state tomography and the reconstruction of the photon number distribution are techniques to extract the properties of a light field from measurements of its mean and fluctuations. These techniques are particularly useful when dealing with macroscopic or mesoscopic systems, where a description limited to the second order autocorrelation soon becomes inadequate. In particular, the emission of nonclassical light is expected from mesoscopic quantum dot systems strongly coupled to a cavity or in systems with large optical nonlinearities. We analyze the emission of a quantum dot-semiconductor optical amplifier system by quantifying the modifications of a femtosecond laser pulse propagating through the device. Using a balanced detection scheme in a self-heterodyning setup, we achieve precise measurements of the quadrature components and their fluctuations at the quantum noise limit1. We resolve the photon number distribution and the thermal-to-coherent evolution in the photon statistics of the emission. The interferometric detection achieves a high sensitivity in the few photon limit. From our data, we can also reconstruct the second order autocorrelation function with higher precision and time resolution compared with classical Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiments.

DOI: 10.1117/12.2273855

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Measuring fluctuations in matter's low-energy excitations is the key to unveiling the nature of the non-equilibrium response of materials. A promising outlook in this respect is offered by spectroscopic methods that address matter fluctuations by exploiting the statistical nature of light-matter interactions with weak few-photon probes. Here we report the first implementation of ultrafast phase randomized tomography, combining pump-probe experiments with quantum optical state tomography, to measure the ultrafast non-equilibrium dynamics in complex materials. Our approach utilizes a time-resolved multimode heterodyne detection scheme with phase-randomized coherent ultrashort laser pulses, overcoming the limitations of phase-stable configurations and enabling a robust reconstruction of the statistical distribution of phase-averaged optical observables. This methodology is validated by measuring the coherent phonon response in α-quartz. By tracking the dynamics of the shot-noise limited photon number distribution of few-photon probes with ultrafast resolution, our results set an upper limit to the non-classical features of phononic state in α-quartz and provide a pathway to access non-equilibrium quantum fluctuations in more complex quantum materials.

Quantum-light sources based on semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are promising candidates for many applications in quantum photonics and quantum communication. Important emission characteristics of such emitters, namely the single-photon purity and photon indistinguishability, are usually assessed via time-correlated measurements using standard 'click' detectors in Hanbury Brown and Twiss or Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM-) type configurations. In this work, we employ a state-of-the-art photon-number-resolving (PNR) detection system based on superconducting transition-edge sensors (TESs) to directly access the photon-number distribution of deterministically fabricated solid-state single-photon sources. Offering quantum efficiencies close to unity and high energy resolution, our TES-based two-channel detector system allows us to analyse the quantum optical properties of a QD-based non-classical light source. In particular, it enables the direct observation of the two-particle Fock-state resulting from interference of quantum mechanically indistinguishable photons in HOM-experiments. Additionally, comparative measurements reveal excellent quantitative agreement of the photon-indistinguishabilities obtained with PNR ((90 ± 7)%) and standard click ((90 ± 5)%) detectors. Our work thus demonstrates that TES-based detectors are perfectly suitable for the quantum metrology of non-classical light sources and higlights appealing prospects for the efficient implementation of quantum information tasks based on multi-photon states.