We demonstrate the possibility of a self-consistent characterization of the photon-number statistics of a light field by using photoemissive detectors with internal gain simply endowed with linear input/output responses. The method can be applied to both microscopic and mesoscopic photon-number regimes. The detectors must operate in the linear range without need of photon-counting capabilities.
Photon statistics of superbunching pseudothermal light
Key Laboratory of Multifunctional Materials and Structures, Ministry of Education & International Center for Dielectric Research, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University（多功能材料与结构教育部重点实验室、国际介电研究中心，西安交通大学电子科学与工程学院）；The Key Laboratory of Weak Light Nonlinear Photonics (Nankai University, Tianjin 300457), Ministry of Education, China（弱光非线性光子学教育部重点实验室（南开大学））；MOE Key Laboratory for Nonequilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, Department of Applied Physics, Xi’an Jiaotong University（凝聚态物质非平衡合成与调制教育部重点实验室，西安交通大学应用物理系）
This work proposes to investigate the photon statistics of the light transmitted and reflected by a two-dimensional array of interacting atoms. The reflected beam is characterized by photon antibunching. On the other hand, in the transmitted beam the indistinguishability between the driving laser photons and the photons re-emitted by the atoms results in photon bunching. The overlap between the driving and scattered fields is enhanced by the cooperative optical response of the atomic array. In the examples used in this paper, up to 25\% of the transmitted photons are grouped in pairs. The simu…
Quantum statistics of light transmitted through an intracavity Rydberg medium
本文从理论上研究了光通过由Rydberg-Rydberg van der Waals相互作用引起的强非线性原子介质的量子统计特性。在我们的实验装置中，原子位于腔中，在弱信号场和强控制光的作用下，通过一个中间态非共振驱动原子从其基态到里德伯能级的双光子跃迁。为了表征透射光，我们计算二阶关联函数$g^{\left(2\right)}\left(τ\right)$。我们在铷原子的特定情况下获得的模拟表明，通过适当地调整物理参数，可以随意选择出射光束的聚束或反聚束性质。
The nature of light sources is defined by the statistical fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. As such, the photon statistics of light sources are typically associated with distinct emitters. Here, we demonstrate the possibility of producing light beams with various photon statistics through the spatial modulation of coherent light. This is achieved by the sequential encoding of controllable Kolmogorov phase screens in a digital micromirror device. Interestingly, the flexibility of our scheme allows for the arbitrary shaping of spatial light modes with engineered photon statistics at dif…
We present the experimental generation of light with directly observable close-to ideal thermal statistical properties. The thermal light state is prepared using a spontaneous Raman emission in a warm atomic vapor. The photon number statistics is evaluated by both the measurement of second-order correlation function and by the detailed analysis of the corresponding photon number distribution, which certifies the quality of the Bose-Einstein statistics generated by natural physical mechanism. We further demonstrate the extension of the spectral bandwidth of the generated light to hundreds of MH…
Controlling the photon statistics of light is paramount for quantum science and technologies. Recently, we demonstrated that transmitting resonant laser light past an ensemble of two-level emitters can result in a stream of single photons or excess photon pairs. This transformation is due to quantum interference between the transmitted and incoherently scattered two-photon component. Here, using the dispersion of the atomic medium, we actively control the relative quantum phase between these two components. We thereby realize a tunable two-photon interferometer and observe interference fringes…
Modeling the Quantum Photon Statistics in Hybrid Light-Matter Integrated Circuits
Hewlett Packard Labs（惠普实验室）；Institute of Nanotechnology, National Research Council（国家研究委员会纳米技术研究所）；Institute of Semiconductor and Solid State Physics, Johannes Kepler University（约翰内斯开普勒大学半导体与固态物理研究所）
Thermal states of light are widely used in quantum optics for various quantum phenomena testing. Particularly, they can be utilized for characterization of photon creation and photon annihilation operations. During the last decade the problem of photon subtraction from multimode quantum states become of much significance. Therefore, in this work we present a technique for statistical parameter estimation of multimode multiphoton subtracted thermal states of light, which can be used for multimode photon annihilation test.
When a laser beam passes through a rotating ground glass (RGG), the scattered light exhibits thermal statistics. This is extensively used in speckle imaging. This scattering process has not been addressed in photon picture and is especially relevant if non-classical light is scattered by the RGG. We develop the photon picture for the scattering process using the Bose statistics for distributing $N$ photons in $M$ pixels. We obtain analytical form for the P-distribution of the output field in terms of the P-distribution of the input field. In particular we obtain a general relation for the $n$-…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of Abelian anyons in a one-dimensional system. We find that the interplay of anyonic statistics and interactions gives rise to spatially asymmetric particle transport together with a novel dynamical symmetry that depends on the anyonic statistical angle and the sign of interactions. Moreover, we show that anyonic statistics induces asymmetric spreading of quantum information, characterized by asymmetric light cones of out-of-time-ordered correlators. Such asymmetric dynamics is in sharp contrast with the dynamics of conventional fermions or bosons, where b…
We study the photoelectric current generated by a driving light with nonclassical photon statistics. Due to the nonclassical input photon statistics, it is no longer enough to treat the driving light as a planar wave as in classical physics. We make a quantum approach to study such problems, and find that: when the driving light starts from a coherent state as the initial state, our quantum treatment well returns the quasi-classical driving description; when the the driving light is a generic state with a certain P function, the full system dynamics can be reduced as the P function average of …
We introduce a simple approach how an electromagnetic environment can be efficiently embedded into state-of-the-art electronic structure methods, taking the form of radiation-reaction forces. We demonstrate that this self-consistently provides access to radiative emission, natural linewidth, Lamb shifts, strong-coupling, electromagnetically induced transparency, Purcell-enhanced and superradiant emission. As an example, we illustrate its seamless integration into time-dependent density-functional theory with virtually no additional cost, presenting a convenient shortcut to light-matter interac…
The fundamental interaction between free electrons and light stands at the base of both classical and quantum physics, with applications in free-electron acceleration, radiation sources, and electron microscopy. Yet, to this day, all experiments involving free-electron light interactions are fully explained by describing the light as a classical wave, disregarding its quantum nature. Here, we observe quantum statistics effects of photons on free-electron-light interactions. We demonstrate interactions passing continuously from Poissonian to super-Poissonian and up to thermal statistics, unveil…
Quantum vision is currently emerging as an interdisciplinary field synthesizing the physiology of human vision with modern quantum optics. We recently proposed a biometric scheme based on the human visual system's ability to perform photon counting. We here present a light stimulus source that can provide for the requirements of this biometric scheme, namely a laser light beam having a cross section consisting of discrete pixels, allowing for an arbitrary pattern of illuminated pixels, each having a photon number per unit time obeying a Poisson distribution around the mean. Both the illuminati…
