No Arabic abstract
It is well known that the Husimi Q-function of the signal field can actually be measured by the eight-port homodyne detection technique, provided that the reference beam (used for homodyne detection) is a very strong coherent field so that it can be treated classically. Using recent rigorous results on the quantum theory of homodyne detection observables, we show that any phase space observable, and not only the Q-function, can be obtained as a high amplitude limit of the signal observable actually measured by an eight-port homodyne detector. The proof of this fact does not involve any classicality assumption.
We consider the moment operators of the observable (i.e. a semispectral measure or POM) associated with the balanced homodyne detection statistics, with paying attention to the correct domains of these unbounded operators. We show that the high amplitude limit, when performed on the moment operators, actually determines uniquely the entire statistics of a rotated quadrature amplitude of the signal field, thereby verifying the usual assumption that the homodyne detection achieves a measurement of that observable. We also consider, in a general setting, the possibility of constructing a measurement of a single quantum observable from a sequence of observables by taking the limit on the level of moment operators of these observables. In this context, we show that under some natural conditions (each of which is satisfied by the homodyne detector example), the existence of the moment limits ensures that the underlying probability measures converge weakly to the probability measure of the limiting observable. The moment approach naturally requires that the observables be determined by their moment operator sequences (which does not automatically happen), and it turns out, in particular, that this is the case for the balanced homodyne detector.
Fast and accurate measurement is a highly desirable, if not vital, feature of quantum computing architectures. In this work we investigate the usefulness of adaptive measurements in improving the speed and accuracy of qubit measurement. We examine a particular class of quantum computing architectures, ones based on qubits coupled to well controlled harmonic oscillator modes (reminiscent of cavity-QED), where adaptive schemes for measurement are particularly appropriate. In such architectures, qubit measurement is equivalent to phase discrimination for a mode of the electromagnetic field, and we examine adaptive techniques for doing this. In the final section we present a concrete example of applying adaptive measurement to the particularly well-developed circuit-QED architecture.
We theoretically study the phase sensitivity of the SU(1,1) interferometer with a coherent light together with a squeezed vacuum input case using the method of homodyne. We find that the homodyne detection has better sensitivity than the intensity detection under this input case. For a certain intensity of coherent light (squeezed light) input, the relative phase sensitivity is not always better with increasing the squeezed strength (coherent light strength). The phase sensitivity can reach the Heisenberg limit only under a certain moderate parameter interval, which can be realized with current experiment ability.
Optical homodyne detection has found use in a range of quantum technologies as both a characterisation tool and as a way to post-selectively generate non-linearities. So far optical implementations have been limited to bulk optics. Here we present the first homodyne detector fully integrated with silicon photonics and suitable for measurements of the quantum state of the electromagnetic field. This high speed, compact detector shows low noise operation, with 10 dB of clearance between shot noise and electronic noise, up to a speed of 160 MHz. These performances are suitable for on-chip characterisation of optical quantum states, such as Fock or squeezed states. As a first application, we show the generation of quantum random numbers at 1.2 Gbps generation rate. The produced random numbers pass all the statistical tests provided by the NIST statistical test suite.
The representation of quantum states via phase-space functions constitutes an intuitive technique to characterize light. However, the reconstruction of such distributions is challenging as it demands specific types of detectors and detailed models thereof to account for their particular properties and imperfections. To overcome these obstacles, we derive and implement a measurement scheme that enables a reconstruction of phase-space distributions for arbitrary states whose functionality does not depend on the knowledge of the detectors, thus defining the notion of detector-agnostic phase-space distributions. Our theory presents a generalization of well-known phase-space quasiprobability distributions, such as the Wigner function. We implement our measurement protocol, using state-of-the-art transition-edge sensors without performing a detector characterization. Based on our approach, we reveal the characteristic features of heralded single- and two-photon states in phase space and certify their nonclassicality with high statistical significance.