No Arabic abstract
Quantum lithography proposes to adopt entangled quantum states in order to increase resolution in interferometry. In the present paper we experimentally demonstrate that the output of a high-gain optical parametric amplifier can be intense yet exhibits quantum features, namely, sub-Rayleigh fringes, as proposed by Agarwal et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1389 (2001)). We investigate multiphoton states generated by a high-gain optical parametric amplifier operating with a quantum vacuum input for a gain values up to 2.5. The visibility has then been increased by means of three-photon absorption. The present article opens interesting perspectives for the implementation of such an advanced interferometrical setup.
High gain parametric amplifier with a single-pass pulsed pump is known to generate broadband twin photon fields that are entangled in amplitude and phase but have complicated spectral correlation. Fortunately, they can be decomposed into independent temporal modes. But the common treatment of parametric interaction Hamiltonian does not consider the issue of time ordering problem of interaction Hamiltonian and thus leads to incorrect conclusion that the mode structure and the temporal mode functions do not change as the gain increases. In this paper, we use an approach that is usually employed for treating nonlinear interferometers and avoids the time ordering issue. This allows us to derive an evolution equation in differential-integral form. Numerical solutions for high gain situation indicate a gain-dependent mode structure that has its mode distributions changed and mode functions broadened as the gain increases.
Spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) has been one of the foremost tools in quantum optics for over five decades. Over that time it has been used to demonstrate some of the curious features that arise from quantum mechanics. Despite the success of SPDC, its higher-order analogues have never been observed, even though it has been suggested that they generate far more unique and exotic states than SPDC. An example of this is the emergence of non-Gaussian states without the need for post-selection. Here we calculate the expected rate of emission for nth-order SPDC with and without external stimulation (seeding). Focusing primarily on third-order parametric down-conversion (TOPDC), we estimate the photon detection rates in a rutile crystal, for both the unseeded and seeded regimes.
Conventional incoherent imaging based on measuring the spatial intensity distribution in the image plane faces the resolution hurdle described by the Rayleigh diffraction criterion. Here, we demonstrate theoretically using the concept of the Fisher information that quadrature statistics measured by means of array homodyne detection enables estimation of the distance between two incoherent point sources well below the Rayleigh limit for sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio. This capability is attributed to the availability of spatial coherence information between individual detector pixels acquired using the coherent detection technique. A simple analytical approximation for the precision attainable in the sub-Rayleigh region is presented. Furthermore, an estimation algorithm is proposed and applied to Monte Carlo simulated data.
We experimentally demonstrated that the quantum correlations of amplitude and phase quadratures between signal and idler beams produced from a non-degenerate optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) can be significantly improved by using a mode cleaner in the pump field and reducing the phase fluctuations in phase locking systems. Based on the two technical improvements the quantum entanglement measured with a two-mode homodyne detector is enhanced from ~ 4 dB to ~ 6 dB below the quantum noise limit using the same NOPA and nonlinear crystal.
We theoretically investigate the generation of two entangled beams of light in the process of single-pass type-I noncollinear frequency degenerate parametric downconversion with an ultrashort pulsed pump. We find the spatio-temporal squeezing eigenmodes and the corresponding squeezing eigenvalues of the generated field both numerically and analytically. The analytical solution is obtained by modeling the joint spectral amplitude of the field by a Gaussian function in curvilinear coordinates. We show that this method is highly efficient and is in a good agreement with the numerical solution. We also reveal that when the total bandwidth of the generated beams is sufficiently high, the modal functions cannot be factored into a spatial and a temporal parts, but exhibit a spatio-temporal coupling, whose strength can be increased by shortening the pump.