Noise figure improvement and quantum information tapping in a fiber optical parametric amplifier with correlated quantum fields
Xueshi Guo, Nannan Liu, Xiaoying Li, Yuhong Liu, Z. Y. Ou
Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate an improvement of $0.7\pm 0.1$ dB in the noise figure in a low noise fiber-optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) with the injection of correlated quantum fields generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing in fibers. The noise performance of the amplifier is characterized with homodyne detectors. The experimental result shows that the noise levels in the two output ports (signal and idler) of the amplifier are both $1.0\pm 0.1$ dB lower than a regular FOPA with vacuum at the unused input port. In addition, we demonstrate the scheme can be used as a quantum information tap with a combined information transfer efficiency (signal and tap) as $T_{sig}+T_{tap} =1.47\pm 0.2$, which is larger than the classical limit of 1. This low noise FOPA can be applied to the low noise amplification in the measurement of weak signals.