Creation, storage, and on-demand release of optical quantum states with a negative Wigner function

Highly nonclassical quantum states of light, characterized by Wigner functions with negative values, have been created so far only in a heralded fashion. In this case, the desired output emerges rarely and randomly from a quantum-state generator. An important example is the heralded production of high-purity single-photon states, typically based on some nonlinear optical interaction. In contrast, on-demand single-photon sources were also reported, exploiting the quantized level structure of matter systems. These sources, however, lead to highly impure output states, composed mostly of vacuum. While such impure states may still exhibit certain single-photon-like features such as anti-bunching, they are not enough nonclassical for advanced quantum information processing. On the other hand, the intrinsic randomness of pure, heralded states can be circumvented by first storing and then releasing them on demand. Here we propose such a controlled release, and we experimentally demonstrate it for heralded single photons. We employ two optical cavities, where the photons are both created and stored inside one cavity, and finally released through a dynamical tuning of the other cavity. We demonstrate storage times of up to 300 ns, while keeping the single-photon purity around 50% after storage. This is the first demonstration of a negative Wigner function at the output of an on-demand photon source or a quantum memory. In principle, our storage system is compatible with all kinds of nonclassical states, including those known to be essential for many advanced quantum information protocols.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Generation of one-million-mode continuous-variable cluster state by unlimited time-domain multiplexing

In recent quantum optical continuous-variable experiments, the number of fully inseparable light modes has drastically increased by introducing a multiplexing scheme either in the time domain or in the frequency domain. Here, modifying the time-domain multiplexing experiment reported in Nature Photonics 7, 982 (2013), we demonstrate successive generation of fully inseparable light modes for more than one million modes. The resulting multi-mode state is useful as a dual-rail CV cluster state. We circumvent the previous problem of optical phase drifts, which has limited the number of fully inseparable light modes to around ten thousands, by continuous feedback control of the optical system.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

タイミング制御可能な単一光子源の開発とそれを用いたHong-Ou-Mandel状態生成の研究

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : （主査）東京大学教授 古澤 明, 東京大学教授 香取 秀俊, 東京大学教授 小芦 雅斗, 東京大学教授 中村 泰信, 慶應義塾大学准教授 山本 直樹University of Tokyo(東京大学

Quantum-limited mirror-motion estimation

We experimentally demonstrate optomechanical motion and force measurements near the quantum precision limits set by the quantum Cramér-Rao bounds. Optical beams in coherent and phase-squeezed states are used to measure the motion of a mirror under an external stochastic force. Utilizing optical phase tracking and quantum smoothing techniques, we achieve position, momentum, and force estimation accuracies close to the quantum Cramér-Rao bounds with the coherent state, while the estimation using squeezed states shows clear quantum enhancements beyond the coherent-state bounds