Measuring fluorescence into a nanofiber by observing field quadrature noise


Abstract in English

We perform balanced homodyne detection of the electromagnetic field in a single-mode tapered optical nanofiber surrounded by rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap. Resonant fluorescence of atoms into the nanofiber mode manifests itself as increased quantum noise of the field quadratures. The autocorrelation function of the homodyne detectors output photocurrent exhibits exponential fall-off with a decay time constant of $26.3pm 0.6$ ns, which is consistent with the theoretical expectation under our experimental conditions. To our knowledge, this is the first experiment in which fluorescence has been observed and measured by balanced optical homodyne detection.

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