We create an optical frequency, polarization independent, narrow band-pass filter of 1.3 GHz (3 dB bandwidth), using the steep dispersion near the Rubidium D1 atomic transitions within a prism-shaped vapor cell. This enables us to clean the amplified spontaneous emission from a laser by more than 3 orders of magnitude. Such a filter could find uses in fields such as quantum information processing and Raman spectroscopy.
Developments in quantum technologies lead to new applications that require radiation sources with specific photon statistics. A widely used Poissonian statistics are easily produced by lasers; however, some applications require super- or sub-Poissonian statistics. Statistical properties of a light source are characterized by the second-order coherence function g^(2)(0). This function distinguishes stimulated radiation of lasers with g^(2)(0)=1 from light of other sources. For example, g^(2)(0)=2 for black-body radiation, and g^(2)(0)=0 for single-photon emission. One of the applications requiring super-Poissonian statistics (g^(2)(0)>1) is ghost imaging with thermal light. Ghost imaging also requires light with a narrow linewidth and high intensity. Currently, rather expensive and inefficient light sources are used for this purpose. In the last year, a superluminescent diode based on amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) has been considered as a new light source for ghost imaging. Even though ASE has been widely studied, its photon statistics has not been settled - there are neither reliable theoretical estimates of the second-order coherence function nor unambiguous experimental data. Our computer simulation clearly establishes that coherence properties of light produced by ASE are similar to that of a thermal source with g^(2)(0)=2 independent of pump power. This result manifests the fundamental difference between ASE and laser radiation.
We measured the ensemble-averaged spectral correlation functions and statistical distributions of spectral spacing and intensity for lasing modes in weakly scattering systems, and compared them to those of the amplified spontaneous emission spikes. Their dramatic differences illustrated the distinct physical mechanisms. Our numerical simulation revealed that even without reabsorption the number of potential lasing modes might be greatly reduced by local excitation of a weakly scattering system. The lasing modes could be drastically different from the quasimodes of the passive system due to selective amplification of the feedback from the scatterers within the local gain region.
We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of optically rephased photon echoes. These echoes exhibit noise due to amplified spontaneous emission, however this noise can be seen as a consequence of the entanglement between the atoms and the output light. With a rephasing pulse one can get an echo of the amplified spontaneous emission, leading to light with nonclassical correlations at points separated in time, which is of interest in the context of building wide bandwidth quantum repeaters. We also suggest a wideband version of DLCZ protocol based on the same ideas.
Adaptive optics (AO) is a key technology for ground-based optical and infrared astronomy, providing high angular resolution and sensitivity. AO systems employing laser guide stars (LGS) can achieve high sky coverage, but their performance is limited by LGS return flux. We examine the potential of two new approaches that might produce high-intensity atmospheric laser beacons. Amplified spontaneous emission could potentially boost the intensity of beacons produced by conventional resonant excitation of atomic or molecular species in the upper atmosphere. This requires the production of a population inversion in an electronic transition that is optically-thick to stimulated emission. Potential excitation mechanisms include continuous wave pumping, pulsed excitation and plasma generation. Alternatively, a high-power femtosecond pulsed laser could produce a white-light supercontinuum high in the atmosphere. The broad-band emission from such a source could also facilitate the sensing of the tilt component of atmospheric turbulence.
We propose a passive all optical device capable of transforming the orbital angular momentum (OAM) state of light conditioned over the polarization states. The efficiency of this device is ensured due to its linear optical nature. As applications of this device, we show CNOT and SWAP operations between polarization and OAM qubits, non-interferometric OAM mode sorter and generalized Pauli X operation on a four-dimensional subspace of OAM.