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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Quantum temporal imaging of antibunching

Junheng Shi, Giuseppe Patera, D. B. Horoshko, Mikhail I. Kolobov

Published Oct 8, 2020• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We consider transformation of quantum intensity correlations of light, observed by direct photodetection, by a single-lens temporal imaging scheme with magnification factor M . We prove that such an imaging scheme performs noiseless stretching or contraction of the second-order intensity correlation function without deteriorating such nonclassical features as antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics of the photons. We also evaluate the photocurrent fluctuation spectrum for the photodetection of nonclassical light and show that this temporal imaging scheme performs its noiseless scaling by magnification factor M without adding any noise. We illustrate our results by two examples of nonclassical light sources: sub-Poissonian laser as a continuous-wave macroscopic nonclassical light source exhibiting antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics of photons and single-photon source as its pulsed counterpart possessing similar nonclassical features. Our results open interesting possibilities for noiseless control of temporal and spectral characteristics of nonclassical light and can find numerous practical applications in quantum optics and quantum information.

DOI
10.1364/josab.400270

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We consider transformation of quantum intensity correlations of light, observed by direct photodetection, by a single-lens temporal imaging scheme with magnification factor M . We prove that such an imaging scheme performs noiseless stretching or contraction of the second-order intensity correlation function without deteriorating such nonclassical features as antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics of the photons. We also evaluate the photocurrent fluctuation spectrum for the photodetection of nonclassical light and show that this temporal imaging scheme performs its noiseless scaling by magnification factor M without adding any noise. We illustrate our results by two examples of nonclassical light sources: sub-Poissonian laser as a continuous-wave macroscopic nonclassical light source exhibiting antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics of photons and single-photon source as its pulsed counterpart possessing similar nonclassical features. Our results open interesting possibilities for noiseless control of temporal and spectral characteristics of nonclassical light and can find numerous practical applications in quantum optics and quantum information.
We generalize the scheme of conventional temporal imaging to quantum temporal imaging viable for nonclassical states of light. As an example, we apply our scheme to temporally broadband squeezed light and demonstrate a possibility of its noiseless magnification. In particular, we show that one can magnify by a given factor the coherence time of squeezed light and match it to the response time of the photodetector. This feature opens new possibilities for practical applications of temporally broadband squeezed light in quantum optics and quantum information.
Understanding the boundary between classical and nonclassical phenomena is important for both fundamental researches in quantum optics and applications in quantum information. One of the most interesting research directions in this field is exploring nonclassical effects with classical light. In this paper, we will show that it is possible to observe antibunching with thermal light in a Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometer by treating single-photon detectors as photon-number-resolving detectors to perform photon-number projection measurements. Both temporal and spatial antibunching is observed via the correlation of two detectors detecting one and zero photon, respectively. By comparing the measured results of thermal and laser light, it is found that the observed antibunching arises from the combined effect of photon statistics of thermal light and photon-number projection measurement.The classical and nonclassical nature of the observed antibunching is analyzed. The results are helpful to understand the connection between classical and nonclassical correlation and may find applications in multiphoton interference and quantum imaging.
Photons emitted by incoherent sources exhibit temporal bunching, a fundamental manifestation of Bose-Einstein statistics first observed by Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT). While intensity correlation measurements originated in astronomy and are now central across quantum technologies, biophysics, and spectroscopy, observing temporal bunching in broadband thermal light remains limited by detector temporal resolution. Conventional approaches - such as streak cameras or optical upconversion - introduce severe trade-offs in efficiency, bandwidth, or setup versatility. Here, we propose and demonstrate a third route: pre-detection temporal magnification of the optical field prior to measuring its intensity autocorrelation function in a conventional HBT setup. Using an electro-optic time lens with a temporal magnification of 660, we resolve the temporal intensity autocorrelation of broadband thermal light generated via non-degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion with a bandwidth of 250 GHz. This enables direct observation of thermal photon bunching on sub-3.5 picosecond timescales without narrow spectral filtering, establishing pre-detection temporal imaging as a general platform for broadband statistical optics, with applications spanning ultrafast quantum optics, biophysical imaging, and potentially stellar intensity interferometry.
Temporal imaging is a technique enabling manipulation of temporal optical signals in a manner similar to manipulation of optical images in spatial domain. The quantum description of temporal imaging is relevant in the context of long range quantum communication. Indeed this technology relies on the efficiency of quantum repeaters for which the temporal mode matching between the quantum emitters, the communication network and the quantum memories is critical. In this work we address the problem of temporal imaging of a temporally broadband squeezed light generated by a traveling-wave optical parametric amplifier. We consider a single-lens temporal imaging system formed by two dispersive elements and a parametric temporal lens, based on a non- linear process such as sum-frequency generation or four-wave mixing. We derive a unitary transformation of the field operators performed by this kind of time lens and evaluate the squeezing spectrum at the output of the single-lens imaging system. When the efficiency factor of the temporal lens is smaller than unity, the vacuum fluctuations deteriorate squeezing at its output. For efficiency close to unity, when certain imaging conditions are satisfied, the squeezing spectrum at the output of the imaging system will be the same as that at the output of the OPA in terms of the scaled frequency ΩI = MΩ which corresponds to the scaled time tI = t/M . The magnification factor M gives the possibility of matching the coherence time of the broadband squeezed light to the response time of the photodetector.
The study investigates antibunching, sub-Poissonian statistics, and photon correlation functions in the pump and harmonic modes of the seventh harmonic generation process.We investigated various approaches to photon antibunching by solving the generalised interaction Hamiltonian in the Heisenberg picture using short-time approximation.It is inferred that the number of pump photons, coupling of the field strength, and interaction times significantly influence photon antibunching.It is observed that third-order antibunching in the pump mode has greater nonclassicality than second-and first-order antibunching.In the harmonic mode, the nonclassical effect is found to be less pronounced and becomes more evident as the interaction time decreases.The first-order Hamiltonian interaction induces a stronger nonclassical effect than the second-order interaction.The interaction of a coherent pump field with a nonzero harmonic field leads to photon clustering and bunching effects.Finally, photon antibunching appears most pronounced, indicating nonclassicality, as the second-order correlation function decreases.This confirms that antibunching is a fundamental quantum property of light.
Two-photon correlation phenomena, including the historical experiment of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, may have to be described quantum mechanically, regardless of whether the source of radiation is classical or quantum. Supporting this point, we present a ghost imaging type of second-order spatial correlation experiment of chaotic light to show that the classical understanding based on the concept of statistical intensity fluctuations does not give a correct interpretation for the observation. From a practical point of view, this experiment demonstrates the possibility of having high contrast lensless two-photon imaging with chaotic light, suggesting imaging applications for radiations for which no effective lens is available.