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Physical Review A

Manipulating thermal light via displaced-photon subtraction

Gioan Tatsi, David W. Canning, Ugo Zanforlin, Luca Mazzarella, John Jeffers, Gerald S. Buller

Published May 2, 2022• 10 citations

Abstract

Thermal radiation played a pivotal role in the preliminary development of quantum physics where it helped resolve the apparent incongruity of the ultraviolet catastrophe. In contemporary physics, thermal state generation and manipulation finds new application in fields such as quantum imaging and quantum illumination and as a practical realization of Maxwell's demon. These applications often go hand in hand with photon subtraction operations which probabilistically amplify the mean photon number (MPN) of thermal light as a result of its super-Poissonian photon statistics. In this article, we introduce an operation for thermal states of light based on a generalized photon subtraction scheme. Displaced-photon subtraction (DPS) makes use of coherent state displacement followed by a subsequent anti-displacement in combination with single-photon detection to probe the MPN of a thermal state. We find regimes in which the output of a successful DPS is amplified, unchanged, or attenuated relative to the unconditioned output state. The regime of operation is controlled via the magnitude of the coherent displacement. A theoretical description of generalized photon subtraction of a displaced thermal state is derived via a two-mode moment-generating function (MGF) and used to describe generalized DPS. We perform a proof of principle experimental implementation of DPS for the case of a balanced beam splitter for which results demonstrate good agreement with the model.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.105.053701

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Abstract We study feasible and effective techniques to improve the efficiency and fidelity of photon subtraction in order to enable practical quantum resource engineering based on it. We use thermal light for our investigation and consider non-negligible beam splitting beyond the conventional setup, also taking into account photon detection errors. We find that the output is still a photon-subtracted thermal state when a non-negligible amount of light is reflected from the input beam and measured by the photon detector, but it has an effective mean photon number different than that of the input. It enables a strategy for achieving a target photon-subtracted thermal state by employing a stronger input light and leads to substantial improvement in the probability of successful photon subtraction events. We calculate the fidelity of the output state and analyze how it worsens with larger beam splitting ratios and photon counting errors. Using our understanding of the limiting factors in the conventional routine, we propose a new method for photon subtraction that can achieve high-fidelity output with decent efficiency, and using only mediocre photon detectors. We experimentally verify our solutions that are valuable for improving photon subtraction and lowering the experimental barrier.

We study the photon-number distributions (PND) of non-Gaussian states generated by subtracting m photons from or adding m photons to a displacement squeezed thermal state (DSTS). Compared with the PND of DSTS, PND of both m-photon-subtracted DSTS (PSDSTS) and m-photon-added DSTS (PADSTS) are modulated by a factor that is a monotonically increasing function of n, the photonnumber in the resulting non-Gaussian states. And the photon subtraction or addition essentially shifts the PND. We further demonstrate that both PND are periodic functions of the compound phase ϕ−θ/2 involved in complex squeezing and displacement parameters with a period πand exhibit more remarkable oscillations than that of DSTS. In the case of small squeezing and weak coherence, we investigate the negativity of Mandel’s Q parameter and the properties of PND of both PSDSTS and PADSTS. Our results indicate that generating new photon-number-controllable nonclassical states from a squeezed light with coherent component is effective by multiple-photon subtraction or addition when ϕ−θ/2=π/2.

We propose and implement a quantum procedure for enhancing the sensitivity with which one can determine the phase shift experienced by a weak light beam possessing thermal statistics in passing through an interferometer. Our procedure entails subtracting exactly one (which can be generalized to m) photons from the light field exiting an interferometer containing a phase-shifting element in one of its arms. As a consequence of the process of photon subtraction, and somewhat surprisingly, the mean photon number and signal-to-noise ratio of the resulting light field are thereby increased, leading to enhanced interferometry. This method can be used to increase measurement sensitivity in a variety of practical applications, including that of forming the image of an object illuminated only by weak thermal light.

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Photon creation and annihilation are two basic operators in quantum optics. Their experimental implementation provides a perfect toolbox for quantum state engineering. The simplest quantum states, which can be modified both by photon creation and annihilation are thermal states of light. Therefore, the multiphoton subtracted thermal states (MPSTS) draw attention of quantum optics experimentalists last decade. Despite its simplicity they serve as a good testing area for study of a number of quantum phenomena. In the current work we give a review of the recent works related to MPSTS: their theoretical description, preparation and measurement technique and their utilization as a testing area for studying some quantum phenomena like non-Gaussianity, Photonic Maxwell‟s Demon, Quantum Vampire and so on.

We report the generation and the tomographic analysis of novel quantum states of light generated by the controlled addition and subtraction of single photons to and from a classical and fully incoherent thermal light field. Time-domain quantum tomography is used to thoroughly investigate the character of the resulting states. Several different criteria are employed to test and quantify nonclassicality of photon-added thermal states, while the peculiar features concerning the mean photon number of photon-subtracted thermal states are clearly observed.