Enhancing image contrast using coherent states and photon number resolving detectors

We experimentally map the transverse profile of diffraction-limited beams using photon-number-resolving detectors. We observe strong compression of diffracted beam profiles for high detected photon number. This effect leads to higher contrast than a conventional irradiance profile between two Airy disk-beams separated by the Rayleigh criterion.

Mode expansion and Bragg filtering enable a high-fidelity fiber-based photon-pair source

We report the development of a fiber-based single spatial mode source of photon-pairs where the efficiency of extracting photon-pairs is improved over a previous source [18] through the use of fiber-end expansion and Bragg filters. This improvement in efficiency enabled a spectrally bright and pure photon-pair source having a small second-order correlation function (0.03) and a raw spectral brightness of 44,700 pairs/(s nm mW). The source can be configured to generate entangled photon-pairs,characterized via optimal and minimal quantum state tomography, to have a fidelity of 97% and tangle of 92%, without subtracting any background.