904 research outputs found

    Superbunching and Nonclassicality as new Hallmarks of Superradiance

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    Superradiance, i.e., spontaneous emission of coherent radiation by an ensemble of identical two-level atoms in collective states introduced by Dicke in 1954, is one of the enigmatic problems of quantum optics. The startling gist is that even though the atoms have no dipole moment they radiate with increased intensity in particular directions. Following the advances in our understanding of superradiant emission by atoms in entangled WW states we examine the quantum statistical properties of superradiance. Such investigations require the system to have at least two excitations as one needs to explore the photon-photon correlations of the radiation emitted by such states. We present specifically results for the spatially resolved photon-photon correlations of systems prepared in doubly excited WW states and give conditions when the atomic system emits nonclassial light. Equally, we derive the conditions for the occurrence of bunching and even of superbunching, a rare phenomenon otherwise known only from nonclassical states of light like the squeezed vacuum. We finally investigate the photon-photon cross correlations of the spontaneously scattered light and highlight the nonclassicalty of such correlations.Comment: 14 pages, 7 picture

    Generation of N00N-like interferences with two thermal light sources

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    Measuring the MMth-order intensity correlation function of light emitted by two statistically independent thermal light sources may display N00N-like interferences of arbitrary order N=M/2N = M/2. We show that via a particular choice of detector positions one can isolate MM-photon quantum paths where either all MM photons are emitted from the same source or M/2M/2 photons are collectively emitted by both sources. The latter superposition displays N00N-like oscillations with N=M/2N = M/2 which may serve, e.g., in astronomy, for imaging two distant thermal sources with M/2M/2-fold increased resolution. We also discuss slightly modified detection schemes improving the visibility of the N00N-like interference pattern and present measurements verifying the theoretical predictions.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

    Generating Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states using multiport splitters

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    Symmetric multiport splitters are versatile tools in optical quantum information processing. They can be used for studying multiparticle scattering, studying distinguishability and mixedness, and also for the generation of multipartite entangled quantum states. Here, we show that N-photon N-mode Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states can be generated using symmetric multiport beam splitters. Varying the input states' internal degrees of freedom and post-selecting onto certain photon-number distributions allows the probabilistic generation of GHZ states with arbitrary photon numbers. We present two novel schemes, one for odd and one for even numbers of photons, to generate GHZ states using symmetric multiport splitters and compare them to a strategy utilizing a 2N-port network as well as the standard post-selection method

    Experimental entanglement generation using multiport beam splitters

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    Multi-photon entanglement plays a central role in optical quantum technologies. One way to entangle two photons is to prepare them in orthogonal internal states, for example, in two polarisations, and then send them through a balanced beam splitter. Post-selecting on the cases where there is one photon in each output port results in a maximally entangled state. This idea can be extended to schemes for the post-selected generation of larger entangled states. Typically, switching between different types of entangled states require different arrangements of beam splitters and so a new experimental setup. Here, we demonstrate a simple and versatile scheme to generate different types of genuine tripartite entangled states with only one experimental setup. We send three photons through a three-port splitter and vary their internal states before post-selecting on certain output distributions. This results in the generation of tripartite W, G and GHZ states. We obtain fidelities of up to (87.3±1.1)%(87.3 \pm 1.1)\% with regard to the respective ideal states, confirming a successful generation of genuine tripartite entanglement
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