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A review on recent results on on/off reconstruction of optical states

G. Brida, Marco Genovese, Marco Gramegna, Alice Meda, Stefano Olivares, Matteo G. A. Paris, Fabrizio Piacentini, E. Predazzi, P. Traina

Published Oct 30, 2008• 2 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The knowledge of the density matrix of a quantum state plays a fundamental role in several applications, from quantum information to Standard Quantum Mechanics foundations investigation. Recently, a method has been implemented in order to obtain the reconstruction of the (diagonal) elements of the density matrix exploiting the information achievable with realistic on/off detectors (e.g. silicon avalanche photo-diodes). Purpose of this paper is to introduce this on/off method and present the last experimental results obtained with it in several different cases.

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The knowledge of the density matrix of a quantum state plays a fundamental role in several applications, from quantum information to Standard Quantum Mechanics foundations investigation. Recently, a method has been implemented in order to obtain the reconstruction of the (diagonal) elements of the density matrix exploiting the information achievable with realistic on/off detectors (e.g. silicon avalanche photo-diodes). Purpose of this paper is to introduce this on/off method and present the last experimental results obtained with it in several different cases.
The knowledge of the density matrix of a quantum state plays a fundamental role in several fields ranging from quantum information processing to experiments on foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum optics. Recently, a method has been suggested and implemented in order to obtain the reconstruction of the diagonal elements of the density matrix exploiting the information achievable with realistic on/off detectors, e.g. silicon avalanche photo-diodes, only able to discriminate the presence or the absence of light. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the theoretical and experimental developments of the on/off method, including its extension to the reconstruction of the whole density matrix.
Reconstruction of photon statistics of optical states provides fundamental information on the nature of any optical field and finds various relevant applications. Nevertheless, no detector that can accurately discriminate the number of incident photons is available, whereas reconstruction by quantum tomography is not an easily implementable technique suited for a diffuse use. Even if on/off detectors, as usual avalanche photodiodes operating in Geiger mode, seem useless as photocounters, recently it was shown that reconstruction of photon statistics is possible by considering variable quantum efficiency. We have experimentally demonstrated the potential of this technique by reconstructing photon statistics for various optical fields both in the cw and pulsed regime ranging from heralded photon states to multi-thermal and coherent ones. In this paper, after having introduced the method, a review of the results obtained for the mono-partite case is given and the extension to bi-partite case is presented in detail.
Reconstruction of photon statistics of optical states provides fundamental information on the nature of any optical field and helps with various relevant applications. Nevertheless, no detector that can reliably discriminate the number of incident photons is available. On the other hand, the alternative of reconstructing the density matrix by quantum tomography leads to various technical difficulties that are particularly severe in the pulsed regime (where mode matching between a signal and local oscillator is very challenging). Even if on/off detectors, as usual avalanche photodiodes operating in Geiger mode, seem useless as photo-counters, it was recently shown how reconstruction of photon statistics is possible by considering a variable quantum efficiency. Here we present experimental reconstructions of photon number distributions of both continuous-wave and pulsed light beams in a scheme based on on/off avalanche photodetection assisted by maximum-likelihood estimation. Reconstructions of the distribution for both semiclassical and quantum states of light (as single photon, coherent, pseudothermal, and multithermal states) are reported for single-mode and multimode beams. The stability and good accuracy obtained in the reconstruction of these states clearly demonstrate the interesting potentialities of this simple technique.
The knowledge of density matrix is fundamental for several applications, ranging from quantum information to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum optics. Nevertheless, quantum tomography based on homodyne detection is a rather complicated technique when applied to short pulses in photocounting regime. In this paper, we present an experimental work addressed to test an innovative scheme for a full reconstruction of the density matrix by using on/off detection coupled to phase measurements respect to a local oscillator.