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International Journal of Quantum Information

Measuring nonclassical correlation of sub-picosecond pulsed mesoscopic twin-beam states

Alex Pozzoli, Marco Lamperti, Matteo Clerici, Maria Bondani, Alessia Allevi

Published Dec 11, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The robustness of nonclassical correlations exhibited by mesoscopic twin-beam states of light makes them useful for applications in the context of quantum technologies, such as for underwater quantum communication. To this aim, it is crucial to optimize the production of such quantum states of light, and study their level of nonclassicality in terms of different nonclassicality criteria. In this work, we realize an efficient source of well-populated twin-beam states in the red spectral region by pumping parametric down conversion with a natively sub-picosecond laser system. The nonclassical character of such states is investigated in terms of both the noise reduction factor and high-order correlation functions. The obtained results encourage the exploitation of this source in further optical schemes for practical applications.

DOI
10.1142/s021974992540012x

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The robustness of nonclassical correlations exhibited by mesoscopic twin-beam states of light makes them useful for applications in the context of quantum technologies, such as for underwater quantum communication. To this aim, it is crucial to optimize the production of such quantum states of light, and study their level of nonclassicality in terms of different nonclassicality criteria. In this work, we realize an efficient source of well-populated twin-beam states in the red spectral region by pumping parametric down conversion with a natively sub-picosecond laser system. The nonclassical character of such states is investigated in terms of both the noise reduction factor and high-order correlation functions. The obtained results encourage the exploitation of this source in further optical schemes for practical applications.
Mesoscopic twin-beam states, which exhibit robust nonclassical correlations, hold significant potential for applications in quantum technologies, including underwater quantum communication and quantum metrology. As Ytterbium-based lasers delivering sub-picosecond pulses are becoming the cornerstone of ultrafast photonics, optimizing the generation of quantum states of light driven by such short pulses while avoiding the presence of noise sources, such as spurious light, is also becoming essential. To this end, we propose an optical scheme that delivers well-populated entangled states in the red spectral region by pumping parametric down-conversion with optically tilted pulses, addressing the limited gain caused by group velocity mismatch between the driving pump field and the generated quantum radiation. The results obtained so far encourage the exploitation of this source in further optical schemes.
We demonstrate sub-shot-noise photon-number correlations in a (temporal) multimode mesoscopic ($\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{3}$ detected photons) twin beam produced by picosecond-pulsed spontaneous nondegenerate parametric down-conversion. We have separately detected the signal and idler distributions of photons collected in twin coherence areas and found that the variance of the photon-count difference goes below the shot-noise limit by 3.25dB3.25\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{dB}3.25dB. The number of temporal modes contained in the twin beam, as well as the size of the twin coherence areas, depends on the pump intensity. Our scheme is based on spontaneous down-conversion and thus does not suffer from limitations due to the finite gain of the parametric process. Twin beams are also used to demonstrate the conditional preparation of a nonclassical (sub-Poissonian) state.
We demonstrate, by direct measurement of the number of photons in signal and idler, that the twin-beam of light produced by ps-pulsed spontaneous parametric downconversion is endowed with sub-shot-noise photon-number correlations in a mesoscopic intensity regime (more than 1000 detected photons). The noise reduction, calculated from the variance of the difference in the numbers of detected-photons, resulted to be 3.25 dB below the shot-noise level. From experimental data we can recover joint photon-number distribution and a negative-valued joint signal-idler quasi-distributions of integrated intensities, which demonstrates the nonclassical character of the generated field.
The problem of secure underwater communication can take advantage of the exploitation of quantum resources and novel quantum technologies. At variance with the current experiments performed at the single photon level, here we propose a different scenario involving mesoscopic twin-beam states of light and two classes of commercial photon-number-resolving detectors. We prove that twin-beam states remain nonclassical even if the signal propagates in tubes filled with water, while the idler is transmitted in free space. We also demonstrate that from the study of the nonclassicality information about the loss and noise sources affecting the transmission channels can be successfully extracted.
Applying a multiphoton-subtraction technique to the two-color macroscopic squeezed vacuum state of light generated via high-gain parametric down-conversion we conditionally prepare a different state of light: bright multimode low-noise twin beams. A lower noise in the sum of the photon numbers opens a possibility to encode information into this variable while keeping the nonclassical character of the state. The obtained results demonstrate up to eightfold suppression of noise in each beam while preserving and even moderately improving the nonclassical photon-number correlations between the beams. The prepared low-noise macroscopic state, containing up to 2000 photons per mode, is not among the Gaussian states achievable through nonlinear optical processes. Apart from that, we suggest a method for measuring quantum efficiency, which is based on the Fano factor measurement. The proposed technique substantially improves the usefulness of twin beams for quantum communication and metrology.
We present a robust tool to analyze nonclassical properties of multimode twin-beam states in the mesoscopic photon-number domain. The measurements are performed by direct detection. The analysis exploits three different nonclassicality criteria for detected photons exhibiting complementary behavior in the explored intensity regime. Joint signal-idler photon-number distributions and quasidistributions of integrated intensities are determined and compared with the corresponding distributions of detected photons. Experimental conditions optimal for nonclassical properties of twin-beam states are identified.