48 research outputs found
Twin-photon techniques for photo-detector calibration
The aim of this review paper is to enlighten some recent progresses in
quantum optical metrology in the part of quantum efficiency measurements of
photo-detectors performed with bi-photon states. The intrinsic correlated
nature of entangled photons from Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion
phenomenon has opened wide horizons to a new approach for the absolute
measurement of photo-detector quantum efficiency, outgoing the requirement for
conventional standards of optical radiation; in particular the simultaneous
feature of the creation of conjugated photons led to a well known technique of
coincidence measurement, deeply understood and implemented for standard uses.
On the other hand, based on manipulation of entanglement developed for Quantum
Information protocols implementations, a new method has been proposed for
quantum efficiency measurement, exploiting polarisation entanglement in
addition to energy-momentum and time ones, that is based on conditioned
polarisation state manipulation. In this review, after a general discussion on
absolute photo-detector calibration, we compare these different methods, in
order to give an accurate operational sketch of the absolute quantum efficiency
measurement state of the art
First-order interference of nonclassical light emitted spontaneously at different times
We study first-order interference in spontaneous parametric down-conversion
generated by two pump pulses that do not overlap in time. The observed
modulation in the angular distribution of the signal detector counting rate can
only be explained in terms of a quantum mechanical description based on
biphoton states. The condition for observing interference in the signal channel
is shown to depend on the parameters of the idler radiation.Comment: 5 pages, two-column, submitted to PR
Quantum optical coherence tomography with dispersion cancellation
We propose a new technique, called quantum optical coherence tomography
(QOCT), for carrying out tomographic measurements with dispersion-cancelled
resolution. The technique can also be used to extract the frequency-dependent
refractive index of the medium. QOCT makes use of a two-photon interferometer
in which a swept delay permits a coincidence interferogram to be traced. The
technique bears a resemblance to classical optical coherence tomography (OCT).
However, it makes use of a nonclassical entangled twin-photon light source that
permits measurements to be made at depths greater than those accessible via
OCT, which suffers from the deleterious effects of sample dispersion. Aside
from the dispersion cancellation, QOCT offers higher sensitivity than OCT as
well as an enhancement of resolution by a factor of 2 for the same source
bandwidth. QOCT and OCT are compared using an idealized sample.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure
Interferometric Bell-state preparation using femtosecond-pulse-pumped Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion
We present theoretical and experimental study of preparing maximally
entangled two-photon polarization states, or Bell states, using femtosecond
pulse pumped spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). First, we show how
the inherent distinguishability in femtosecond pulse pumped type-II SPDC can be
removed by using an interferometric technique without spectral and amplitude
post-selection. We then analyze the recently introduced Bell state preparation
scheme using type-I SPDC. Theoretically, both methods offer the same results,
however, type-I SPDC provides experimentally superior methods of preparing Bell
states in femtosecond pulse pumped SPDC. Such a pulsed source of highly
entangled photon pairs is useful in quantum communications, quantum
cryptography, quantum teleportation, etc.Comment: 11 pages, two-column format, to appear in PR
Image and Coherence Transfer in the Stimulated Down-conversion Process
The intensity transverse profile of the light produced in the process of
stimulated down-conversion is derived. A quantum-mechanical treatment is used.
We show that the angular spectrum of the pump laser can be transferred to the
stimulated down-converted beam, so that images can also be transferred from the
pump to the down-converted beam. We also show that the transfer can occur from
the stimulating beam to the down-converted one. Finally, we study the process
of diffraction through an arbitrarily shaped screen. For the special case of a
double-slit, the interference pattern is explicitly obtained. The visibility
for the spontaneous emitted light is in accordance with the van Cittert -
Zernike theorem for incoherent light, while the visibility for the stimulated
emitted light is unity. The overall visibility is in accordance with previous
experimental results
Experimental observation of nonclassical effects on single-photon detection rates
It is often asserted that quantum effects can be observed in coincidence
detection rates or other correlations, but never in the rate of single-photon
detection. We observe nonclassical interference in a singles rate, thanks to
the intrinsic nonlinearity of photon counters. This is due to a dependence of
the effective detection efficiency on the quantum statistics of the light beam.
Such measurements of detector response to photon pairs promise to shed light on
the microscopic aspects of silicon photodetectors, and on general issues of
quantum measurement and decoherence.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Entangled-Photon Generation from Parametric Down-Conversion in Media with Inhomogeneous Nonlinearity
We develop and experimentally verify a theory of Type-II spontaneous
parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in media with inhomogeneous distributions of
second-order nonlinearity. As a special case, we explore interference effects
from SPDC generated in a cascade of two bulk crystals separated by an air gap.
The polarization quantum-interference pattern is found to vary strongly with
the spacing between the two crystals. This is found to be a cooperative effect
due to two mechanisms: the chromatic dispersion of the medium separating the
crystals and spatiotemporal effects which arise from the inclusion of
transverse wave vectors. These effects provide two concomitant avenues for
controlling the quantum state generated in SPDC. We expect these results to be
of interest for the development of quantum technologies and the generation of
SPDC in periodically varying nonlinear materials.Comment: submitted to Physical Review
One-Way Entangled-Photon Autocompensating Quantum Cryptography
A new quantum cryptography implementation is presented that combines one-way
operation with an autocompensating feature that has hitherto only been
available in implementations that require the signal to make a round trip
between the users. Using the concept of advanced waves, it is shown that this
new implementation is related to the round-trip implementations in the same way
that Ekert's two-particle scheme is related to the original one-particle scheme
of Bennett and Brassard. The practical advantages and disadvantages of the
proposed implementation are discussed in the context of existing schemes.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; Minor edits--conclusions unchanged; accepted for
publication in Physical Review
How much time does a measurement take?
We consider the problem of measurement using the Lindblad equation, which
allows the introduction of time in the interaction between the measured system
and the measurement apparatus. We use analytic results, valid for weak
system-environment coupling, obtained for a two-level system in contact with a
measurer (Markovian interaction) and a thermal bath (non-Markovian
interaction), where the measured observable may or may not commute with the
system-environment interaction. Analysing the behavior of the coherence, which
tends to a value asymptotically close to zero, we obtain an expression for the
time of measurement which depends only on the system-measurer coupling, and
which does not depend on whether the observable commutes with the system-bath
interaction. The behavior of the coherences in the case of strong
system-environment coupling, found numerically, indicates that an increase in
this coupling decreases the measurement time, thus allowing our expression to
be considered the upper limit for the duration of the process.Comment: REVISED VERSION: 17 pages, 2 figure
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger nonlocality for continuous variable systems
As a development of our previous work, this paper is concerned with the
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) nonlocality for continuous variable cases.
The discussion is based on the introduction of a pseudospin operator, which has
the same algebra as the Pauli operator, for each of the modes of a light
field. Then the Bell-CHSH (Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt) inequality is
presented for the modes, each of which has a continuous degree of freedom.
Following Mermin's argument, it is demonstrated that for -mode
parity-entangled GHZ states (in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space) of the
light field, the contradictions between quantum mechanics and local realism
grow exponentially with , similarly to the usual -spin cases.Comment: RevTEX; comments are welcomed; new version with minor change