The work is devoted to the theoretical and experimental study of quantum states of light conditionally prepared by subtraction of a random number of photons from the initial multimode thermal state. A fixed number of photons is subtracted from a multimode quantum state, but only a subsystem of a lower number of modes is registered, in which the number of subtracted photons turns out to be a non-fixed random variable. It is shown that the investigation of multiphoton subtracted multimode thermal states provides a direct study of the fundamental quantum-statistical properties of bosons using a simple experimental implementation. The developed experimental setup plays a role of a specific boson lototron, which is based on the fundamental link between the statistics of boson systems and the Polya distribution. It is shown that the calculation of the photon number distribution based on the Polya urn scheme is equivalent to a calculation using statistical weights for boson systems. A mathematical model based on the composition of the Polya distribution and thermal state is developed and verified. The experimental results are in a good agreement with the developed theory.
The subtraction of a single photon from a multimode quantum field is analyzed as the conditional evolution of an open quantum system. We develop a theory describing different subtraction schemes in a unified approach and we introduce the concept of subtraction modes intrinsic to the process. The matching between the subtraction modes and the modes of the field defines different possible scenarios for the photon subtraction. In particular, our framework identifies: the conditions of pure photon subtraction, the quantum states of the field modes conditioned to the photon subtraction, the mode wi…
We study how photon addition and subtraction can be used to generate squeezed superpositions of coherent states in free-traveling fields (SSCSs) with high fidelities and large amplitudes. It is shown that an arbitrary $N$-photon subtraction results in the generation of a SSCS with nearly the perfect fidelity ($F>0.999$) regardless of the number of photons subtracted. In this case, the amplitude of the SSCS increases as the number of the subtracted photons gets larger. For example, two-photon subtraction from a squeezed vacuum state of 6.1dB can generate a SSCS of $α=1.26$, while in the case of…
Engineering quantum states of light represents a crucial task in the vast majority of photonic quantum technology applications. Direct manipulation of the number of photons in the light signal, such as single-photon subtraction and addition, proved to be an efficient strategy for the task. Here we propose an adaptive multi-photon subtraction scheme where a particular subtraction task is conditioned by all previous subtraction events in order to maximize the probability of successful subtraction. We theoretically illustrate this technique on the model example of conversion of Fock states via ph…
We propose a method to improve the performance of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol by virtual photon subtraction. The Virtual photon subtraction implemented via non-Gaussian post-selection not only enhances the entanglement of two-mode squeezed vacuum state but also has advantages in simplifying physical operation and promoting efficiency. In two-way protocol, virtual photon subtraction could be applied on two sources independently. Numerical simulations show that the optimal performance of renovated two-way protocol is obtained with photon subtraction only used by…
The process of single-photon subtraction (SPS) is known to dramatically alter the properties of certain quantum optical states. Somewhat surprisingly, subtracting zero photons can also modify quantum states and has practical applications in quantum communication. Here we experimentally investigate zero-photon subtraction (ZPS) using a wide variety of input states and conditional measurements based on actively detecting zero photons in one output port of a variable beamsplitter. We find that SPS and ZPS can exhibit complementary behavior depending on the photon statistics of the input states, a…
Photon subtraction from squeezed states is a powerful scheme to create good approximation of so-called Schrödinger cat states. However, conventional continuous-wave-based methods actually involve some impurity in squeezing of localized wavepackets, even in the ideal case of no optical losses. Here we theoretically discuss this impurity, by introducing mode-match of squeezing. Furthermore, here we propose a method to remove this impurity by filtering the photon-subtraction field. Our method in principle enables creation of pure photon-subtracted squeezed states, which was not possible with conv…
Entanglement is an indispensable quantum resource for quantum information technology. In continuous-variable quantum optics, photon subtraction can increase the entanglement between Gaussian states of light, but for mixed states the extent of this entanglement increase is poorly understood. In this work, we use an entanglement measure based the Rényi-2 entropy to prove that single-photon subtraction increases bipartite entanglement by no more than log 2. This value coincides with the maximal amount of bipartite entanglement that can be achieved with one photon. The upper bound is valid for all…
We describe a scheme of deterministic single-photon subtraction in a solid-state system consisting of a charged quantum dot coupled to a bimodal photonic-crystal cavity with a moderate magnetic field applied in a Voigt configuration. We numerically simulate injection of optical pulses into one of the modes of the bimodal cavity and show that the system deterministically transfers one photon into the second cavity mode for input pulses in the form of both Fock states and coherent states.
We propose and investigate an optical scheme for probabilistic implementation of an arbitrary single-mode quantum operation that can be expressed as a function of photon number operator. The scheme coherently combines multiple photon addition and subtraction and is feasible with current technology. As concrete examples, we demonstrate that the device can perform approximate noiseless linear amplification of light and can emulate Kerr nonlinearity.
We propose and demonstrate a novel method to generate a large-amplitude coherent-state superposition (CSS) via ancilla-assisted photon-subtraction. The ancillary mode induces quantum interference of indistinguishable processes, widening the controllability of quantum superposition at the conditional output. We demonstrate the concept in the time domain, by a simple time-separated two-photon subtraction from cw squeezed light. We observe the largest CSS ever reported without any corrections, which will enable various quantum information applications with CSS states.
We investigate how the entanglement properties of a two-mode state can be improved by performing a coherent superposition operation of photon subtraction and addition, proposed by Lee and Nha [Phys. Rev. A 82, 053812 (2010)], on each mode. We show that the degree of entanglement, the EPR-type correlation, and the performance of quantum teleportation can be all enhanced for the output state when the coherent operation is applied to a two-mode squeezed state. The effects of the coherent operation are more prominent than those of the mere photon subtraction and the addition particularly in the sm…
Theoretical analysis is given for a two-photon subtraction from a continuous wave (CW) squeezed vacuum with finite time separation between two detection events. In the CW photon subtraction process, the generated states are inevitably described by temporal mutimode states. Our approach is based on Schrödinger picture which provides mathematically simple forms and an intuitive understanding of its multimode structure. We show that, in our process, the photon subtracted squeezed vacuum is generated in two temporal modes and one of these modes acts as an ancillary mode to make the other one a lar…
We experimentally demonstrate that the entanglement between Gaussian entangled states can be increased by non-Gaussian operations. Coherent subtraction of single photons from Gaussian quadrature-entangled light pulses, created by a non-degenerate parametric amplifier, produces delocalized states with negative Wigner functions and complex structures, more entangled than the initial states in terms of negativity. The experimental results are in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions.
Photon subtraction and addition are experimental means of generating non-Gaussian states from Gaussian states. Coherent subtraction or addition is a combination of photon subtractions or additions. The resultant states are quite general non-Gaussian states. The states can be photon number entangled states with arbitrary coefficients. We derive the entanglement conditions for several classes of coherent subtraction or coherent addition bipartite continuous variable states. One of the entanglement conditions is necessary and sufficient.
In our work, we compare three teleportation protocols: the original protocol, the photon subtraction protocol, and the protocol with a cubic phase gate. We evaluate the fidelity of each protocol using the example of teleportation of the squeezed state and the Schrodinger's cat state. We show that, under equal conditions, the teleportation scheme with a cubic phase gate achieves significantly higher fidelity than the other protocols considered.
It has been found that non-Gaussian operations can be applied to increase and distill entanglement between Gaussian entangled states. We show the successful use of the non-Gaussian operation, in particular, photon subtraction operation, on the continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (CV-MDI-QKD) protocol. The proposed method can be implemented based on existing technologies. Security analysis shows that the photon subtraction operation can remarkably increase the maximal transmission distance of the CV-MDI-QKD protocol, which precisely make up for the shortc…
Recently Parigi et al. [Science 317, 1890 (2007)] implemented experimentally the photon subtraction and addition processes from/to a light field in a conditional way, when the required operations were produced successfully only upon the positive outcome of a separate measurement. It was verified that for a low intensity beam (quantum regime) the bosonic annihilation operator does indeed describe a single photon subtraction, while the creation operator describes a photon addition. Nonetheless, the exact formal expressions for these operations do not always reduce to these simple identifications…
A deterministic quantum amplifier inevitably adds noise to an amplified signal due to the uncertainty principle in quantum physics. We here investigate how a quantum-noise-limited amplifier can be improved by additionally employing the photon subtraction, the photon addition, and a coherent superposition of the two, thereby making a probabilistic, heralded, quantum amplifier. We show that these operations can enhance the performance in amplifying a coherent state in terms of intensity gain, fidelity, and phase uncertainty. In particular, the photon subtraction turns out to be optimal for the f…
Photon subtraction can enhance the performance of continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV QKD). However, the enhancement effect will be reduced by the imperfections of practical devices, especially the limited efficiency of a single-photon detector. In this paper, we propose a non-Gaussian postselection method to emulate the photon substraction used in coherent-state CV QKD protocols. The virtual photon subtraction not only can avoid the complexity and imperfections of a practical photon-subtraction operation, which extends the secure transmission distance as the ideal case does, but …
The conventional photon subtraction and photon addition transformations, $\varrho \rightarrow t a \varrho a^†$ and $\varrho \rightarrow t a^† \varrho a$, are not valid quantum operations for any constant $t>0$ since these transformations are not trace nonincreasing. For a fixed density operator $\varrho$ there exist fair quantum operations, ${\cal N}_{-}$ and ${\cal N}_{+}$, whose conditional output states approximate the normalized outputs of former transformations with an arbitrary accuracy. However, the uniform convergence for some classes of density operators $\varrho$ has remained essenti…
We have devised an experimentally realizable model generating twin beam states whose individual beam photon statistics are varied from thermal to Poissonian keeping the non-classical mode correlation intact. We have studied the usefulness of these states for loss measurement by considering three different estimators, comparing with the correlated thermal twin beam states generated from spontaneous parametric down conversion or four-wave mixing. We then incorporated the photon subtraction operation into the model and demonstrate their advantage in loss estimations with respect to un-subtracted …
Subtracting photons from a two-mode squeezed state is a well-known method to increase entanglement. We analyse different strategies of local photon subtraction from a two-mode squeezed state in terms of entanglement gain and success probability. We develop a general framework that incorporates imperfections and losses in all stages of the process: before, during, and after subtraction. By combining all three effects into a single efficiency parameter, we provide analytical and numerical results for subtraction strategies using photon-number-resolving and threshold detectors. We compare the ent…
We study the interplay of photons interacting with an artificial atom in the presence of a controlled dephasing. Such artifical atoms consisting of several independent scatterer can exhibit remarkable properties superior to single atoms with a prominent example being a superatom based on Rydberg blockade. We demonstrate that the induced dephasing allows for the controlled absorption of a single photon from an arbitrary incoming probe field. This unique tool in photon-matter interaction opens a way for building novel quantum devices and several potential applications like a single photon transi…
We have created heralded coherent state superpositions (CSS), by subtracting up to three photons from a pulse of squeezed vacuum light. To produce such CSSs at a sufficient rate, we used our high-efficiency photon-number-resolving transition edge sensor to detect the subtracted photons. This is the first experiment enabled by and utilizing the full photon-number-resolving capabilities of this detector. The CSS produced by three-photon subtraction had a mean photon number of 2.75 -0.24/+0.06 and a fidelity of 0.59 -0.14/+0.04 with an ideal CSS. This confirms that subtracting more photons result…
Non-Gaussian continuous-variable quantum states represent a pivotal resource in many quantum information protocols. Production of such states can occur through photonic subtraction process either at the transmitter side prior to sending a state through the channel, or at the receiver side on receipt of a state that has traversed the channel. In the context of quantum protocols implemented over communication channels to and from Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellites it is unclear what photonic subtraction set-up will provide for the best performance. In this work we show that for a popular version o…
We have studied theoretical un-symmetric multi-photon subtracted twin beam state and demonstrated a method for generating states that resembles to high photon number states with the increase in the number of subtracted photons through Wigner distribution function, which can be reconstructed experimentally by Homodyne measurement. A crucial point is high non-classicality is obtained by photon subtraction when mean photons per mode of twin beam state is low. We have calculated photon statistics from the phase space distribution function and found sub-poissonian behaviour in the same low mean pho…
Inconclusive photon subtraction (IPS) is a conditional measurement scheme to force nonlinear evolution of a given state. In IPS the input state is mixed with the vacuum in a beam splitter and then the reflected beam is revealed by ON/OFF photodetection. When the detector clicks we have the (inconclusive) photon subtracted state. We show that IPS on both channels of an entangled twin-beam of radiation improves the fidelity of coherent state teleportation if the energy of the incoming twin-beam is below a certain threshold, which depends on the beam splitter transmissivity and the quantum effici…
We propose a scheme for the conditional generation of arbitrary finite superpositions of (squeezed) Fock states in a single mode of a traveling optical field. The suggested setup requires only a source of squeezed states, beam splitters, strong coherent beams, and photodetectors with single-photon sensitivity. The method does not require photodetectors with a high efficiency nor with a single-photon resolution.
We investigate how the entanglement characteristics of a non-Gaussian entangled state are increased or decreased by a local photon subtraction operation. The non-Gaussian entangled state is generated by injecting a single-mode non-Gaussian state and a vacuum state into a 50:50 beam splitter. We consider a photon-added coherent state and an odd coherent state as a single-mode non-Gaussian state. In the regime of small amplitude, we show that the performance of quantum teleportation and the second-order Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen-type correlation can both be enhanced, whereas the degree of entangl…
We consider the problem of evaluating the entanglement of non-Gaussian mixed states generated by photon subtraction from entangled squeezed states. The entanglement measures we use are the negativity and the logarithmic negativity. These measures possess the unusual property of being computable with linear algebra packages even for high-dimensional quantum systems. We numerically evaluate these measures for the non-Gaussian mixed states which are generated by photon subtraction with on/off photon detectors. The results are compared with the behavior of certain operational measures, namely the …
It is shown that a highly phase sensitive polarization squeezed (2n-1)-photon state can be generated by subtracting a diagonally polarized photon from the 2n photon component generated in collinear type II downconversion. This polarization wedge state has the interesting property that its photon number distribution in the horizontal and vertical polarizations remains sharply defined for phase shifts of up to 1/n between the circularly polarized components. Phase shifts at the Heisenberg limit are therefore observed as nearly deterministic transfers of a single photon between the horizontal and…
We experimentally and theoretically investigate the scattering of a photonic quantum field from another stored in a strongly interacting atomic Rydberg ensemble. Considering the many-body limit of this problem, we derive an exact solution to the scattering-induced spatial decoherence of multiple stored photons, allowing for a rigorous understanding of the underlying dissipative quantum dynamics. Combined with our experiments, this analysis reveals a correlated coherence-protection process in which the scattering from one excitation can shield all others from spatial decoherence. We discuss how…
Alternating Squeezing and Photon Subtraction for Optical Cat-State Generation
Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena（耶拿弗里德里希·席勒大学）；Institute of Applied Physics, Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena（耶拿弗里德里希·席勒大学应用物理研究所阿贝光子学中心）；Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF（弗劳恩霍夫应用光学和精密工程研究所IOF）；Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and Optics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena（耶拿弗里德里希·席勒大学凝聚态理论与光学研究所）
Manipulating light by adding and subtracting individual photons is a powerful approach with a principal drawback: the operations are fundamentally probabilistic and the probability is often small. This limits not only the fundamental scalability but also the number of operations that can be applied in realistic experimental settings. We propose and analyze an adaptive technique which can significantly increase the probability of success while preserving the quality of the photon subtraction. We show the improvement both in single mode preparation and manipulation of non-Gaussian states with ne…
A new entangled quantum state is introduced by applying local coherent superposition (ra^+ +ta) of photon subtraction and addition to each mode of even entangled coherent state (EECS) and the properties of entanglement are investigated. It is found that the Shchukin-Vogel inseparability, the degree of entanglement and the average fidelity of quantum teleportation of the EECS can be improved due to the coherent superposition operation. The effects of improvement by coherent superposition operation are better than those by single (a^+) and two-photon (a^+ b^+) addition operations under a small r…
In this article we report that the entanglement produced by single photon subtraction is maximum, by studying the entanglement of multi photon subtraction from two mode squeezed states. We argue that the single photon subtraction produces maximum entanglement as it is more non-classical in nature than many photon subtractions
We analyze in details the properties of the conditional state recently obtained by J. Wenger, et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 92}, 153601 (2004)] by means of inconclusive photon subtraction (IPS) on a squeezed vacuum state $S(r)\ket{0}$. The IPS process can be characterized by two parameters: the IPS transmissivity $τ$ and the photodetection quantum efficiency $η$. We found that the conditional state approaches the squeezed Fock state $S(r)\ket{1}$ when $τ,η\to 1$, i.e., in the limit of single-photon subtraction. For non-unit IPS transmissivity and efficiency, the conditioned state remains close…
This work establishes a versatile theoretical framework that explicitly describes single-photon subtraction from multimode quantum light in the context of non-Gaussian state generation and manipulation. The treatment focuses on easy-to-implement configurations in which no mode-selective operation is available and evaluates features and advantages of scheme where only simple filtering stages are employed on the experiments. Such configuration, by considerably reducing the experimental overheads, makes experiments involving single photon subtraction easier to be implemented. Obtained theoretical…
We present a detailed theoretical analysis for the distillation of one copy of a mixed two-mode continuous-variable entangled state using beamsplitters and coherent photon-detection techniques, including conventional on-off detectors and photon number resolving detectors. The initial Gaussian mixed-entangled states are generated by transmitting a two-mode squeezed state through a lossy bosonic channel, corresponding to the primary source of errors in current approaches to optical quantum communication. We provide explicit formulas to calculate the entanglement in terms of logarithmic negativit…
One of the limitation of continuous variable quantum key distribution is relatively short transmission distance of secure keys. In order to overcome the limitation, some solutions have been proposed such as reverse reconciliation, trusted noise concept, and non-Gaussian operation. In this paper, we propose a protocol using photon subtraction at receiver which utilizes synergy of the aforementioned properties. By simulations, we show performance of the proposed protocol outperforms other conventional protocols. We also find the protocol is more efficient in a practical case. Finally, we provide…
We study a coherent superposition of field annihilation and creation operator acting on continuous variable systems and propose its application for quantum state engineering. Specifically, it is investigated how the superposed operation transforms a classical state to a nonclassical one, together with emerging nonclassical effects. We also propose an experimental scheme to implement this elementary coherent operation and discuss its usefulness to produce an arbitrary superposition of number states involving up to two photons.
We investigate the entanglement patterns of photon-added and -subtracted four-mode squeezed vacuum states. Entanglements in different scenarios are analyzed by varying the number of photons added or subtracted in certain modes, which are referred to as the "player" modes, the others being "spectators." We find that the photon-subtracted state can give us higher entanglement than the photon-added state which is in contrast of the two-mode situation. We also study the logarithmic negativity of the two-mode reduced density matrix obtained from the four-mode state which again shows that the state …
We prepare single phonon Fock state of mechanical mode in optomechanical system based on photon subtraction process in the linear regime of optomechanical interaction. The correlation set between cavity and field modes is utilized to recast the state of a pre-cooled mechanical mode into a single phonon Fock state as the field mode is subjected to a photon subtraction type measurement at a dynamical instant of interaction time. The resultant conditional state of mechanical mode quantified by its Wigner function, exhibits an excellent compatibility with the standard single quantum Fock state. We…
In this paper, we study entanglement distillation of multipartite continuous-variable Gaussian entangled states. Following Opatrný \emph{et al.}'s photon subtraction (PS) scheme, the probability of successful distillation decreases exponentially with the number of parties $N$. However, here, we shall propose an entanglement distillation scheme whose success probability scales as a constant with $N$. Our protocol employs several local squeezers, but it requires only a single PS operation. Using the logarithmic negativity as a measure of entanglement, we find that both the success probability an…
We propose a high-rate generation method of optical Schrödinger's cat states. Thus far, photon subtraction from squeezed vacuum states has been a standard method in cat-state generation, but its constraints on experimental parameters limit the generation rate. In this paper, we consider the state generation by photon number measurement in one mode of arbitrary two-mode Gaussian states, which is a generalization of conventional photon subtraction, and derive the conditions to generate high-fidelity and large-amplitude cat states. Our method relaxes the constraints on experimental parameters, al…
We consider theoretically how to extract mode dependent single photons from a time/frequency multimode non-classical beam. To achieve this task, we calculate the properties of sum frequency generation with a pulse shaped pump, taking into account both temporal and spatial degree of freedom. We show that using a non-collinear configuration it is possible to achieve a mode dependent weakly reflective beam splitter, with Schmidt number compatible with photon extraction for continuous variable regime tasks. We explicit the possible application to the degaussification of highly multimode squeezed f…
We show that the recently proposed scheme of teleportation of continuous variables [S.L. Braunstein and H.J. Kimble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 869 (1998)] can be improved by a conditional measurement in the preparation of the entangled state shared by the sender and the recipient. The conditional measurement subtracts photons from the original entangled two-mode squeezed vacuum, by transmitting each mode through a low-reflectivity beam splitter and performing a joint photon-number measurement on the reflected beams. In this way the degree of entanglement of the shared state is increased and so is t…
We address conditional de-Gaussification of continuous variable states by inconclusive photon subtraction (IPS) and review in details its application to bipartite twin-beam state of radiation. The IPS map in the Fock basis has been derived, as well as its counterpart in the phase-space. Teleportation assisted by IPS states is analyzed and the corresponding fidelity evaluated as a function of the involved parameters. Nonlocality of IPS states is investigated by means of different tests including displaced parity, homodyne detection, pseudospin, and displaced on/off photodetection. Dissipation a…
