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Optical and Quantum Sensing and Precision Metrology II

Determining the modal structure of quantum light with intensity interferometry

Guillaume Thekkadath

Published Mar 8, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Determining the modal structure of quantum light is important for photonic information processing, sensing, and imaging. A full modal characterization requires determining both the amplitude and phase of light’s spatial and spectral distributions, as well as its polarization. We propose using Hanbury Brown and Twiss “intensity interferometry” with a classical reference field to perform this full characterization without the need for phase stability or nonlinearities. The technique can be applied to any quantum signal, such as single photons and entangled photon pairs.

DOI
10.1117/12.2657317

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Determining the modal structure of quantum light is important for photonic information processing, sensing, and imaging. A full modal characterization requires determining both the amplitude and phase of light’s spatial and spectral distributions, as well as its polarization. We propose using Hanbury Brown and Twiss “intensity interferometry” with a classical reference field to perform this full characterization without the need for phase stability or nonlinearities. The technique can be applied to any quantum signal, such as single photons and entangled photon pairs.
The ability to manipulate and measure the time-frequency structure of quantum light is useful for information processing and metrology. Measuring this structure is also important when developing quantum light sources with high modal purity that can interfere with other independent sources. Here, we present and experimentally demonstrate a scheme based on intensity interferometry to measure the joint spectral mode of photon pairs produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We observe correlations in the spectral phase of the photons due to chirp in the pump. We show that our scheme can be combined with stimulated emission tomography to quickly measure their mode using bright classical light. Our scheme does not require phase stability, nonlinearities, or spectral shaping and thus is an experimentally simple way of measuring the modal structure of quantum light.
The ability to characterize the complete quantum state of light is essential for both fundamental and applied science. For single photons the quantum state is provided by the mode that it occupies. The spectral temporal mode structure of light has recently emerged as an essential means for quantum information science. Here we experimentally demonstrate a self-referencing technique to completely determine the pulse-mode structure of single photons by means of spectral shearing interferometry. We detail the calibration and resolution of the measurement and discuss challenges and critical requirements for future advances of this method.
The development of quantum-enhanced technologies requires single-photon sources, as well as methods for their characterization and verification. Here, we describe a methodology for measuring the correlation function of a single-photon source using an experimental setup that comprises a laser-excited fluorescence microscope equipped with a Hanbury Brown–Twiss intensity interferometer as one of the detection systems. Measurements of the response function of the device and the reference samples are performed. The second-order autocorrelation function of the exciton state of GaAs quantum dots in AlGaAs nanowires is obtained and reveals a single-photon emission.
Temporal-spectral modes of light provide a fundamental window into the nature of quantum systems and offer a robust means for information encoding. Methods to precisely characterize the temporal-spectral state of light at the single-photon level thus play a central role in understanding single-photon sources and their applications in emerging optical quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate an optical reference-free method, which melds techniques from ultrafast metrology and single-photon spectral detection, to characterize the pulse-mode structure of heralded single photons.
Abstract Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is the foundation for stellar intensity interferometry. However, it is a phase insensitive two-photon interference effect. Here we extend the HBT interferometer by mixing a reference field with the input fields before intensity correlation measurement. With the freely available coherent state serving as the reference field, we experimentally demonstrate the phase sensitive two-photon interference effect when the input fields are thermal fields in either continuous wave or non-stationary pulsed wave and measure the complete complex second-order coherence function of the input fields without bringing them together from separate locations. Moreover, we discuss how to improve the signal level by using the more realistic continuous wave broadband anti-bunched light fields as the reference field. Our investigations pave the way for developing new technology of remote sensing and coherent imaging.
Hanbury-Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is the foundation for stellar intensity interferometry. However, it is a phase insensitive two-photon interference effect. Here we extend the HBT interferometer by mixing intensity-matched reference fields with the input fields before intensity correlation measurement. With the freely available coherent state serving as the reference field, we experimentally demonstrate the phase sensitive two-photon interference effect when the input fields are thermal fields in either continuous wave or non-stationary pulsed wave and measure the complete complex second-order coherence function of the input fields without bringing them together from separate locations. Moreover, we discuss how to improve the signal level by using the more realistic continuous wave broadband anti-bunched light fields as the reference field. Our investigations pave the way for developing new technology of remote sensing and interferometric imaging with applications in long baseline high-resolution astronomy.