Quantum enhanced imaging and sensing with correlated light

Without light, there would be no sight. Light acts as a probe in various measurement techniques ranging from imaging to spectroscopy, from small scale cantilever displace- ment measurement in atomic force microscopy to large scale mirror motion in interfer- ometry, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and many other fields. As the light probe intensity rises, it not only allows reducing the background noise effect, but it also aids precision to the measurement by reducing the photon noise (shot-noise) contribution. However, increasing intensity beyond certain threshold level is not always advantageous for ultra sensitive measurements. For example in the detection of gravitational waves, the current power circulating in the large scale interferometers can not be increased further without introducing other noise sources like thermal effects on the mirrors, un- wanted scattered photons, and back action due to radiation pressure. In the imaging of delicate photo sensitive sample, high power can causes cell damage or it may lead to disturb the regular process under investigation, viz. favouring certain biochemical reaction, which do not correspond to natural in vitro behaviour. At low intensity, pho- ton noise is an important concern and quantum states of light with correlated photon fluctuation can ideally represent a fruitful way to build specific measurement strategies to surpass the limitation of standard approach based on classical light sources, offering an avenue of solutions for ultra sensitive measurements. This thesis work focuses on two application of quantum enhanced measurement strate- gies. The first part of the thesis work has been dedicated to the realization of the first wide-field microscope with Sub Shot Noise (SSN) sensitivity. This is based on the ex- ploitation of quantum correlations in the Squeezed Vacuum state. In the second part, the investigations have made on the role of the quantum correlated beams in an unusual interferometric scheme, in which two identical optical interferometers are subject to the same phase fluctuation. The scheme, in the classical regime, has been already imple- mented in a large scale experiment devoted to the search of possible quantum gravity (QG) effects at Fermilab

Realization of a twin beam source based on four wave mixing in Cesium

Four-wave mixing (4WM) is a known source of intense non-classical twin beams. It can be generated when an intense laser beam (the pump) and a weak laser beam (the seed) overlap in a ð3Þ medium (here Cesium vapor), with frequencies close to resonance with atomic transitions. The twin beams generated by 4WM have frequencies naturally close to atomic transitions, and can be intense (gain 1) even in the CW pump regime, which is not the case for PDC ð2Þ phenomenon in nonlinear crystals. So, 4WM is well suited for atom-light interaction and atombased quantum-protocols. Here, we present the ¯rst realization of a source of 4-wave mixing exploiting D2 line of Cesium atoms