493 research outputs found
Transmittivity measurements by means of squeezed vacuum light
A method for measuring the transmittivity of optical samples by using
squeezed--vacuum radiation is illustrated. A squeezed vacuum field generated by
a below--threshold optical parametric oscillator is propagated through a
nondispersive medium and detected by a homodyne apparatus. The variance of the
detected quadrature is used for measuring the transmittivity. With this method
it is drastically reduced the number of photons passing through the sample
during the measurement interval. The results of some tests are reported.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Tunable non-Gaussian resources for continuous-variable quantum technologies
We introduce and discuss a set of tunable two-mode states of
continuous-variable systems, as well as an efficient scheme for their
experimental generation. This novel class of tunable entangled resources is
defined by a general ansatz depending on two experimentally adjustable
parameters. It is very ample and flexible as it encompasses Gaussian as well as
non-Gaussian states. The latter include, among others, known states such as
squeezed number states and de-Gaussified photon-added and photon-subtracted
squeezed states, the latter being the most efficient non-Gaussian resources
currently available in the laboratory. Moreover, it contains the classes of
squeezed Bell states and even more general non-Gaussian resources that can be
optimized according to the specific quantum technological task that needs to be
realized. The proposed experimental scheme exploits linear optical operations
and photon detections performed on a pair of uncorrelated two--mode Gaussian
squeezed states. The desired non-Gaussian state is then realized via ancillary
squeezing and conditioning. Two independent, freely tunable experimental
parameters can be exploited to generate different states and to optimize the
performance in implementing a given quantum protocol. As a concrete instance,
we analyze in detail the performance of different states considered as
resources for the realization of quantum teleportation in realistic conditions.
For the fidelity of teleportation of an unknown coherent state, we show that
the resources associated to the optimized parameters outperform, in a
significant range of experimental values, both Gaussian twin beams and
photon-subtracted squeezed states.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure
Trapped Ions in Laser Fields: a Benchmark for Deformed-Quantum Oscillators
Some properties of the non--linear coherent states (NCS), recognized by Vogel and de Matos Filho as dark states of a trapped ion, are extended to NCS on a circle, for which the Wigner functions are presented. These states are obtained by applying a suitable displacement operator to the vacuum state. The unity resolutions in terms of the projectors . is also used for introducing the probability distribution funtion while the existence of a measure is exploited for extending the P-representation to these states. The weight of the n-th Fock state of the NCS relative to a trapped ion with Lamb-Dicke parameter oscillates so wildly as grows up to infinity that the normalized NCS fill the open circle in the complex -plane. In addition this prevents the existence of a measure including normalizable states only. This difficulty is overcome by introducing a family of deformations which are rational functions of n, each of them admitting a measure. By increasing the degree of these rational approximations the deformation of a trapped ion can be approximated with any degree of accuracy and the formalism of the P-representation can be applied
Full characterization of Gaussian bipartite entangled states by a single homodyne detector
We present the full experimental reconstruction of Gaussian entangled states
generated by a type--II optical parametric oscillator (OPO) below threshold.
Our scheme provides the entire covariance matrix using a single homodyne
detector and allows for the complete characterization of bipartite Gaussian
states, including the evaluation of purity, entanglement and nonclassical
photon correlations, without a priori assumptions on the state under
investigation. Our results show that single homodyne schemes are convenient and
robust setups for the full characterization of OPO signals and represent a tool
for quantum technology based on continuous variable entanglement.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, slightly longer version of published PR
Quantum tomography as a tool for the characterization of optical devices
We describe a novel tool for the quantum characterization of optical devices. The experimental setup involves a stable reference state that undergoes an unknown quantum transformation and is then revealed by balanced homodyne detection. Through tomographic analysis on the homodyne data we are able to characterize the signal and to estimate parameters of the interaction, such as the loss of an optical component, or the gain of an amplifier. We present experimental results for coherent signals, with application to the estimation of losses introduced by simple optical components, and show how these results can be extended to the characterization of more general optical devices
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