No Arabic abstract
Coherence properties of Bose-Einstein condensates offer the potential for improved interferometric phase contrast. However, decoherence effects due to the mean-field interaction shorten the coherence time, thus limiting potential sensitivity. In this work, we demonstrate increased coherence times with number squeezed states in an optical lattice using the decay of Bloch oscillations to probe the coherence time. We extend coherence times by a factor of 2 over those expected with coherent state BEC interferometry. We observe quantitative agreement with theory both for the degree of initial number squeezing as well as for prolonged coherence times.
Random numbers are a fundamental ingredient for many applications including simulation, modelling and cryptography. Sound random numbers should be independent and uniformly distributed. Moreover, for cryptographic applications they should also be unpredictable. We demonstrate a real-time self-testing source independent quantum random number generator (QRNG) that uses squeezed light as source. We generate secure random numbers by measuring the quadratures of the electromagnetic field without making any assumptions on the source; only the detection device is trusted. We use a homodyne detection to alternatively measure the Q and P conjugate quadratures of our source. Using the entropic uncertainty relation, measurements on P allow us to estimate a bound on the min-entropy of Q conditioned on any classical or quantum side information that a malicious eavesdropper may detain. This bound gives the minimum number of secure bits we can extract from the Q measurement. We discuss the performance of different estimators for this bound. We operate this QRNG with a squeezed state and we compare its performance with a QRNG using thermal states. The real-time bit rate was 8.2 kb/s when using the squeezed source and between 5.2-7.2 kb/s when the thermal state source was used.
We derive the filtering equation for Markovian systems undergoing homodyne measurement in the situation where the output processes being monitored are squeezed. The filtering theory applies to case where the system is driven by Fock noise (that, quantum input processes in a coherent state) and where the output is mixed with a squeezed signal. It also applies to the case of a system driven by squeezed noise, but here there is a physical restriction to emission/absorption coupling only. For the special case of a cavity mode where the dynamics is linear, we are able to derive explicitly the filtered estimate $pi_t (a)$ for the mode annihilator $a$ based on the homodyne quadrature observations up to time $t$.
Single quantum emitters like atoms are well-known as non-classical light sources which can produce photons one by one at given times, with reduced intensity noise. However, the light field emitted by a single atom can exhibit much richer dynamics. A prominent example is the predicted ability for a single atom to produce quadrature-squeezed light, with sub-shot-noise amplitude or phase fluctuations. It has long been foreseen, though, that such squeezing would be at least an order of magnitude more difficult to observe than the emission of single photons. Squeezed beams have been generated using macroscopic and mesoscopic media down to a few tens of atoms, but despite experimental efforts, single-atom squeezing has so far escaped observation. Here we generate squeezed light with a single atom in a high-finesse optical resonator. The strong coupling of the atom to the cavity field induces a genuine quantum mechanical nonlinearity, several orders of magnitude larger than for usual macroscopic media. This produces observable quadrature squeezing with an excitation beam containing on average only two photons per system lifetime. In sharp contrast to the emission of single photons, the squeezed light stems from the quantum coherence of photon pairs emitted from the system. The ability of a single atom to induce strong coherent interactions between propagating photons opens up new perspectives for photonic quantum logic with single emitters
The interference pattern in electron double-slit diffraction is a hallmark of quantum mechanics. A long standing question for stochastic electrodynamics (SED) is whether or not it is capable of reproducing such effects, as interference is a manifestation of quantum coherence. In this study, we use excited harmonic oscillators to directly test this quantum feature in SED. We use two counter-propagating dichromatic laser pulses to promote a ground-state harmonic oscillator to a squeezed Schr{o}dinger cat state. Upon recombination of the two well-separated wavepackets, an interference pattern emerges in the quantum probability distribution but is absent in the SED probability distribution. We thus give a counterexample that rejects SED as a valid alternative to quantum mechanics.
We present an experimental realization of resonance fluorescence in squeezed vacuum. We strongly couple microwave-frequency squeezed light to a superconducting artificial atom and detect the resulting fluorescence with high resolution enabled by a broadband traveling-wave parametric amplifier. We investigate the fluorescence spectra in the weak and strong driving regimes, observing up to 3.1 dB of reduction of the fluorescence linewidth below the ordinary vacuum level and a dramatic dependence of the Mollow triplet spectrum on the relative phase of the driving and squeezed vacuum fields. Our results are in excellent agreement with predictions for spectra produced by a two-level atom in squeezed vacuum [Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{58}, 2539-2542 (1987)], demonstrating that resonance fluorescence offers a resource-efficient means to characterize squeezing in cryogenic environments.