Experimental Vacuum Squeezing in Rubidium Vapor via Self-Rotation

We report the generation of optical squeezed vacuum states by means of polarization self-rotation in rubidium vapor following a proposal by Matsko et al. [Phys. Rev. A 66, 043815 (2002)]. The experimental setup, involving in essence just a diode laser and a heated rubidium gas cell, is simple and easily scalable. A squeezing of 0.85+-0.05 dB was achieved

Conditional large Fock state preparation and field state reconstruction in Cavity QED

We propose a scheme for producing large Fock states in Cavity QED via the implementation of a highly selective atom-field interaction. It is based on Raman excitation of a three-level atom by a classical field and a quantized field mode. Selectivity appears when one tunes to resonance a specific transition inside a chosen atom-field subspace, while other transitions remain dispersive, as a consequence of the field dependent electronic energy shifts. We show that this scheme can be also employed for reconstructing, in a new and efficient way, the Wigner function of the cavity field state.Comment: 4 Revtex pages with 3 postscript figures. Submitted for publicatio

Absolute Glovebox Ventilation Filtration System with Unique Filter Replacement Feature

A glovebox ventilation system was designed for a new plutonium-238 processing facility that provided 1) downdraft ventilation, 2) a leak tight seal around the High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, and 3) a method for changing the filters internally without risk of contaminating the laboratory

Observation of polarization quantum noise of laser radiation in Rb vapor cell

We present experimental study of polarization quantum noise of laser radiation passed through optically think vapor of Rb87. We observe a step-like noise spectrum. We discuss various factor which may result in such noise spectrum and prevent observation of squeezing of quantum fluctuations predicted in Matsko et al. PRA 63, 043814 (2001).Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Translated from Russian by I. Novikov

Raman effect in AlGaAs waveguides for subpicosecond pulses

The Raman effect in semiconductor waveguides below half‐gap is studied both experimentally and numerically. We report the depolarized Raman gain spectra up to 300 cm−1 in Al0.24Ga0.76As at pump wavelengths of 0.515 and 1.55 μm from the measurement of the absolute Raman scattering cross sections using GaAs as a reference scatterer. In addition, the coupled propagation equations for the AlGaAs waveguides are modified to include the Raman effect. By solving the coupled propagation equations numerically, we verify that the energy transfer between two orthogonally polarized pulses demonstrated in previous pump‐probe experiments [M. N. Islam et al., J. Appl. Phys. 71, 1927 (1992)] is caused by Raman effect. We also show numerically that the Raman effect induces spectral distortions on the pulses, and the energy transfer is inversely proportional to the pulse widths. The energy transfer results in a severe cross‐talk problem for sub‐picosecond pulses in AlGaAs waveguides. For example, the energy exchange is about 30% for 300 fs pulses under π phase shift conditions. Therefore, the Raman effect limits the performance of semiconductor waveguides in optical switching applications for sub‐picosecond pulses. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71265/2/JAPIAU-78-4-2198-1.pd

An ultra-sensitive pulsed balanced homodyne detector: Application to time-domain quantum measurements

A pulsed balanced homodyne detector has been developed for precise measurements of electric field quadratures of pulsed optical quantum states. A high level of common mode suppression (> 85 dB) and low electronic noise (730 electrons per pulse) provide a signal to noise ratio of 14 dB for the measurement of the quantum noise of individual pulses. Measurements at repetition rates up to 1 MHz are possible. As a test, quantum tomography of the coherent state is performed and the Wigner function and the density matrix are reconstructed with a 99.5% fidelity. The detection system can also be used for ultrasensitive balanced detection in cw mode, e.g. for weak absorption measurements.Comment: 3 pages, submitted to Optics Letter

Quantum correlations and fluctuations in the pulsed light produced by a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator below its oscillation threshold

We present a simple quantum theory for the pulsed light generated by a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (SPOPO) in the degenerate case where the signal and idler trains of pulses coincide, below threshold and neglecting all dispersion effects. Our main goal is to precise in the obtained quantum effects, which ones are identical to the c.w. case and which ones are specific to the SPOPO. We demonstrate in particular that the temporal correlations have interesting peculiarities: the quantum fluctuations at different times within the same pulse turn out to be totally not correlated, whereas they are correlated between nearby pulses at times that are placed in the same position relative to the centre of the pulses. The number of significantly correlated pulses is of the order of cavity finesse. We show also that there is perfect squeezing at noise frequencies multiple of the pulse repetition frequency when one approaches the threshold from below on the signal field quadrature measured by a balanced homodyne detection with a local oscillator of very short duration compared to the SPOPO pulse length.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure