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Physical Review A

High-fidelity photon-subtraction operation for large-photon-number Fock states

ShengLi Zhang

Published Feb 24, 2020• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The statistics of photon-subtracted and photon-added states has several important applications in quantum optics and quantum information science. In this study, we propose a scheme for a photon-subtraction operation with SU(1,1) beam splitters. We demonstrate that our scheme overcomes the exponential decaying trend of fidelity and works exceptionally well for quantum states with a large number of photons. Moreover, our scheme is effective even with realistic on-off photon detectors and the heralded single-photon source. Thus, our scheme can serve as a useful tool for manipulating the number of photons in bright coherent states and strongly squeezed states in the future.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.023835

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The statistics of photon-subtracted and photon-added states has several important applications in quantum optics and quantum information science. In this study, we propose a scheme for a photon-subtraction operation with SU(1,1) beam splitters. We demonstrate that our scheme overcomes the exponential decaying trend of fidelity and works exceptionally well for quantum states with a large number of photons. Moreover, our scheme is effective even with realistic on-off photon detectors and the heralded single-photon source. Thus, our scheme can serve as a useful tool for manipulating the number of photons in bright coherent states and strongly squeezed states in the future.
The photon-addition operation is the inverse of the photon-subtraction operation and has many important applications in research on photon number statistics in quantum optics. In this study, we propose a scheme for a photon-addition operation with ancilla-free photonic manipulation. This is in strong contrast to conventional photon-addition operations in which a single-photon ancilla is an indispensable resource for photon addition. Moreover, our scheme helps break the exponential decay trend in the probability of success for photon addition operating in large Fock states. Thus, our scheme can be considered as a useful tool for manipulating the photon number of a bright coherent state or a strongly squeezed state in the near future. To be precise, we used the SU(1,1) beamsplitter to replace the conventional beamsplitter, and our work can be considered another important application of the SU(1,1) beamsplitter. The photon-addition operation is applied to both single- and two-mode quantum entangled states, and our results show that SU(1,1)-based photon addition is more powerful and efficient in terms of the fidelity and success probability of the photon-addition operation.
Engineering quantum states of light represents a crucial task in the vast majority of photonic quantum technology applications. Direct manipulation of the number of photons in the light signal, such as single-photon subtraction and addition, proved to be an efficient strategy for the task. Here we propose an adaptive multi-photon subtraction scheme where a particular subtraction task is conditioned by all previous subtraction events in order to maximize the probability of successful subtraction. We theoretically illustrate this technique on the model example of conversion of Fock states via photon subtraction. We also experimentally demonstrate the core building block of the proposal by implementing a feedforward-assisted conversion of two-photon state to a single-photon state. Our experiment combines two elementary photon subtraction blocks where the splitting ratio of the second subtraction beam splitter is affected by the measurement result from the first subtraction block in real time using an ultra-fast feedforward loop. The reported optimized photon subtraction scheme applies to a broad range of photonic states, including highly nonclassical Fock states and squeezed light, advancing the photonic quantum toolbox.
We study how photon addition and subtraction can be used to generate squeezed superpositions of coherent states (SSCSs) in free-traveling fields with high fidelities and large amplitudes. It is shown that an arbitrary NNN-photon subtraction results in the generation of a SSCS with nearly the perfect fidelity (F>0.999)(F>0.999)(F>0.999) regardless of the number of photons subtracted. In this case, the amplitude of the SSCS increases as the number of the subtracted photons gets larger. For example, two-photon subtraction from a squeezed vacuum state of 6.1dB6.1\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{dB}6.1dB can generate a SSCS of $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1.26$, while in the case of the four-photon subtraction a SSCS of a larger amplitude $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1.65$ is obtained under the same condition. When a photon is subtracted from a squeezed vacuum state and another photon is added subsequently, a SSCS with a lower fidelity $(F\ensuremath{\approx}0.96)$ yet higher amplitude $(\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\approx}2)$ can be generated. We analyze some experimental imperfections including inefficiency of the detector used for the photon subtraction.
Photon subtraction (PS) is an important operation for optic quantum information processing. Conventional PS is implemented using a single linear beam splitter (BS) and photon detector. However, in this study, we show that the PS effect can be enhanced using two beam splitters and an optional phase modulator. This can be considered PS with an extended version of the well-known Mach–Zehnder (MZ) interferometer. By tuning the transmittance of the two beam splitters and phase modulator, the probability of success can be considerably improved over that of the original PS scheme with a single BS and photon detector. Moreover, if applied to a single-photon input, our proposed scheme can even implement deterministic PS, which is almost impossible for the original scheme with a single BS and photon detector. Owing to the higher probability of success, applying the PSMZ method to the entanglement enhancement of a very weak two-mode squeezed vacuum state is straightforward. Our result is helpful for improving the yield of output entanglement.
We propose a scheme for the conditional generation of arbitrary finite superpositions of Fock states in a single mode of a traveling optical field. The setup requires a source of squeezed vacuum states, beam splitters, strong coherent beams, photodetectors with single-photon sensitivity, and a final squeezer. If we want to generate a squeezed superposition of Fock states, which is sufficient in several applications, then the last squeezer is not even needed. The thrust of this method is that it achieves a high fidelity without requiring photodetectors with a high efficiency or a single-photon resolution. The possibility to improve its scaling by using a quantum memory is also discussed.
In atomic-scale or quantum physics, an electromagnetic field is composed of photons, optical packets so small that a typical laser pointer with 1mW of power emits billions of them each second. Being able to take away or add a single photon in a light field at will would be useful for accurate engineering of quantum states. Such pure single photons are ideal for carrying and manipulating information in emerging quantum technologies, but generating them still is very challenging. In quantum physics, subtraction or addition of a photon is not a deterministic process. Instead, the probability is proportional to the number of photons originally in the electromagnetic field. This is described by the equation â|n〉 = √ n|n − 1〉 and â†|n〉 = √ n+ 1|n + 1〉, where â and ↠are annihilation and creation operators, respectively, representing the action of subtracting and adding a photon in a field composed of n photons.1 Such single-photon operations were limited to pure theoretical discussions until 2004, when Grangier and coworkers found a simple way to subtract a photon2 from a field. Passing through a beam splitter of high transmittivity, some photons can be split from the initial field. A ‘click’ detected in the photodetector in the reflected channel means one photon has been subtracted from the field: see Figure 1(a). When the initial field is composed of a small number of photons, the effect is dramatic and may even completely change the characteristics of the field. For example, let us take an initial single-mode squeezed state generated by ‘degenerate’ parametric down-conversion, which is an optical nonlinear process that converts a pump photon into two twin photons with half the pump photon energy. (This state is well known for its quantum noise squeezed into one quadrature at the expense of expanded noise in the other quadrature.) In order to visualize the noise properties and characteristics of the squeezed state, a probability-like function, such Figure 1. Setups to subtract (a) and add (b) a single photon from/to a light field. ρin and ρout denote the density operators of the input and output fields; BS is a low-reflectivity beam splitter; PDC is a nonlinear crystal where parametric down-conversion takes place; â and ↠denote on/off photodetectors.