Lecture given at the workshop on "Theoretical and Experimental Foundations of Recent Quantum Technologies" Durban, July 2006. Submited to Journal de Physique IV - Proceedings
We define a class of multi-mode single photon states suitable for quantum information applications. We show how standard amplitude modulation techniques may be used to control the pulse shape of single photon states.
Explicit expressions for optical tomograms of the photon-added coherent states, even/odd photon-added coherent states and photon-added thermal states are given in terms of Hermite polynomials. Suggestions for experimental homodyne detection of the considered photon states are presented.
We introduce the set of $n$-photon coherent states and the set of $n$-photon squeezed coherent states and study their collapse and revival and compare their behavior with the collapse and revival of the corresponding zero-photon coherent states and zero-photon squeezed coherent states, respectively. The set of $n$-photon squeezed coherent states ($n=0,1,2,\cdots$) forms a basis of the Hilbert state of photons and may be of some interest. We notice that the presence of a few extra photons in the $n$-photon states as compared to the corresponding zero-photon states makes a large difference in th…
From the photon-added one-photon nonlinear coherent states $a^{\dagger m}|α,f>$, we introduce a new type of nonlinear coherent states with negative values of $m.$ The nonlinear coherent states corresponding to the positive and negative values of $m$ are shown to be the result of nonunitarily deforming the number states $|m>$ and $|0>$, respectively. As an example, we study the sub-Poissonian statistics and squeezing effects of the photon-added geometric states with negative values of $m$ in detail. Finally we investigate the photon-added two-photon nonlinear coherent states and find that they …
We present an experiment of nonclassical interference between a pure heralded single-photon state and a weak coherent state. Our experiment is the first to demonstrate that spectrally pure single photons can have high interference visibility, 89.4 \pm 0.5%, with weak coherent photons. Our scheme lays the groundwork for future experiments requiring quantum interference between photons in nonclassical states and those in coherent states.
We consider the p-ordered characteristic function and its Fourier transform, the quasidistribution function, of squeezed coherent photons in a thermal state of photons and calculate the mean number and number variance of squeezed coherent photons. All the properties calculated from the previous characteristic function can be used to calculate said properties for photons in a thermal state of squeezed coherent photons via a parametric transformation. In particular, one can obtain the mean number and number variance via the parametric transformation.
Photon-added coherent states have been realized in optical parametric down-conversion by Zavatta {\em et al} [Science 306 (2004) 660-662]. In this report, it is established that the states generated in the process are {\em ideal} photon-added coherent states. It is shown that the scheme can generate higher order photon-added coherent states. A comparative study of the down-conversion process and atom-cavity interaction in generating the photon-added coherent states is presented.
We consider the equilibrium thermal state of photons and determine the mean number and number variance of squeezed coherent photons. We use an integral representation for electro-magnetic radiation applicable both to systems in equilibrium and to systems in nonequilibrium to determine the spectral function of the radiation. The system considered is in thermal equilibrium and we find that the squeezed coherent photons are at a higher temperature than the photons themselves. Also, as expected, the mean number of squeezed coherent photons is greater than that of photons.
In this paper, we construct the $m$-photon-added and $m$-photon-subtracted coherent states on a sphere. These states are shown to satisfy the usual conditions of continuity in the label, normalizability and the resolution of identity. The preparation of the constructed states, as the states of radiation field is considered. We examine and analyze the nonclassical properties of these states, including the photon mean number, Mandel parameter and quadrature squeezing. We find that these states are sub-Poissonian in nature, whereas the degree of squeezing is reduced (enhanced) by increasing $m$ f…
We show that the quantum interference between downconverted photon pairs and photons from coherent laser light can produce a maximally path entangled N-photon output component with a fidelity greater than 90% for arbitrarily high photon numbers. A simple beam splitter operation can thus transform the 2-photon coherence of down-converted light into an almost optimal N-photon coherence.
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…
We study the unitary time evolution of photons interacting with a dielectric resonator using coherent control pulses. We show that non-Markovianity of transient photon dynamics in the resonator subsystem may be controlled to within a photon-resonator transit time. In general, appropriate use of coherent pulses and choice of spatial subregion may be used to create and control a wide range of non-Markovian transient dynamics in photon resonator systems.
We show that the two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model, feasible of experimental realization in cavity or ion-trap quantum electrodynamics, can approximately produce nonlinear coherent states of the field. We introduce these nonlinear coherent states of the field as $2m$-photon added or subtracted coherent states in terms of raising and lowering field operators, also known as London phase operators or Susskind-Glogower operators.
We study a superposed weak coherent state that can fundamentally mimic an ideal single photon not only with respect to the number of photons but also in terms of an indeterminate phase. It is close to the single-photon state with high fidelity and exhibits fundamental features of single photons such as antibunching and Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. The emergence and vanishing of single-photon characteristics can be directly observed by changing two parameters, i.e., the mean photon number and number of phases. Our result shows that the uncertainty between the photon number and phase indeed cons…
We investigate the influence of photon excitations on quantum correlations in tripartite Glauber coherent states of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger type. The pairwise correlations are measured by means of the entropy-based quantum discord. We also analyze the monogamy property of quantum discord in this class of tripartite states in terms of the strength of Glauber coherent states and the photon excitation order.
The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamics of a quantum coherent feedback network composed of two two-level systems (qubits) driven by two counter-propagating photons, one in each input channel. The coherent feedback network enhances the nonlinear photon-photon interaction inside the feedback loop. By means of quantum stochastic calculus and the input-output framework, the analytic form of the steady-state output two-photon state is derived. Based on the analytic form, the applications on the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer and marginally stable single-photon devices using this coh…
Tailored photonic cavities allow enhancing light-matter interaction ultimately to create a fully coherent quantum interface. Here, we report on an integrated microdisk cavity containing self-assembled quantum dots to coherently route photons between different access waveguides. We measure a Purcell factor of $F_{exp}=6.9\pm0.9$ for a cavity quality factor of about 10,000, allowing us to observe clear signatures of coherent scattering of photons by the quantum dots. We show how this integrated system can coherently re-route photons between the drop and bus ports, and how this routing is control…
Nonclassical properties of photon added and photon subtracted squeezed coherent states have been compared with specific focus on the higher order nonclassicalities, such as higher order squeezing, higher order sub-Poissonian photon statistics, higher order antibunching. It is observed that both photon added and photon subtracted squeezed coherent states are highly nonclassical as they satisfy criteria for all of the above mentioned nonclassicalities and a set of other criteria including negativity of Wigner function, Klyshko's criterion and Agarwal's $(A_{3})$ parameter. Further, the amount of…
It is shown that a linear superposition of two macroscopically distinguishable optical coherent states can be generated using a single photon source and simple all-optical operations. Weak squeezing on a single photon, beam mixing with an auxiliary coherent state, and photon detecting with imperfect threshold detectors are enough to generate a coherent state superposition in a free propagating optical field with a large coherent amplitude ($α>2$) and high fidelity ($F>0.99$). In contrast to all previous schemes to generate such a state, our scheme does not need photon number resolving measurem…
We propose a simple scheme to generate an arbitrary photon-added coherent state of a travelling optical field by using only a set of degenerate parametric amplifiers and single-photon detectors. Particularly, when the single-photon-added coherent state (SPACS) is observed by following, e.g., the novel technique of Zavatta \emph{$et al.$} (Science 306, 660 (2004)), we also obtain the generalized optical entangled $W$ state. Finally, a qualitative analysis of possible losses in our scheme is given.
We study GHZ-type and W-type three-mode entangled coherent states. Both the types of entangled coherent states violate Mermin's version of the Bell inequality with threshold photon detection (i.e., without photon counting). Such an experiment can be performed using linear optics elements and threshold detectors with significant Bell violations for GHZ-type entangled coherent states. However, to demonstrate Bell-type inequality violations for W-type entangled coherent states, additional nonlinear interactions are needed. We also propose an optical scheme to generate W-type entangled coherent st…
It is generally assumed that on-off detectors with single-photon sensitivity cannot distinguish coherent states from phase-mixed coherent states without some form of quadrature-based tomography. Here, we show that it is theoretically possible to distinguish these states without quadrature-based methods by comparing the vacuum probability of one output port of a variable beam splitter (VBS) that has two different phase-mixed coherent states as its inputs to the well-known case of dual coherent-state inputs. As an application, a method is proposed to test whether a laser field is in a coherent s…
We investigate the nonclassicality of photon-added coherent states in the photon loss channel by exploring the entanglement potential and negative Wigner distribution. The total negative probability defined by the absolute value of the integral of the Wigner function over the negative distribution region reduces with the increase of decay time. The total negative probability and the entanglement potential of pure photon-added coherent states exhibit the similar dependence on the beam intensity. The reduce of the total negative probability is consistent with the behavior of entanglement potenti…
We demonstrate ultrafast coherent coupling between an atomic qubit stored in a single trapped cadmium ion and a photonic qubit represented by two resolved frequencies of a photon. Such ultrafast coupling is crucial for entangling networks of remotely-located trapped ions through photon interference, and is also a key component for realizing ultrafast quantum gates between Coulomb-coupled ions.
Single-photon subtraction plays important roles in optical quantum information processing as it provides a non-Gaussian characteristic in continuous-variable quantum information. While the conventional way of implementing single-photon subtraction based on a low-reflectance beam splitter works properly for a single-mode quantum state, it is unsuitable for a multimode quantum state because a single photon is subtracted from all multiple modes without maintaining their mode coherence. Here we experimentally implement and characterize a mode-tunable coherent single-photon subtractor based on sum …
We study quantum teleportation between two different types of optical qubits using hybrid entanglement as a quantum channel under decoherence effects. One type of qubit employs the vacuum and single photon states for the basis, called a single-rail single-photon qubit, and the other utilizes coherent states of opposite phases. We find that teleportation from a single-rail single-photon qubit to a coherent state qubit is better than the opposite direction in terms of fidelity and success probability. We compare our results with those using a different type of hybrid entanglement between a polar…
It is well known that a minimum error quantum measurement for arbitrary binary optical coherent states can be realized by a receiver that comprises interfering with a coherent reference light, photon counting, and feedback control. We show that, for ternary optical coherent states, a minimum error measurement cannot always be realized by such a receiver. The problem of finding an upper bound on the maximum success probability of such a receiver can be formulated as a convex programming. We derive its dual problem and numerically find the upper bound. At least for ternary phase-shift keyed cohe…
Number state filtering in coherent states leads to sub-Poissonian photon statistics. These states are more suitable for phase estimation when compared with the coherent states. Nonclassicality of these states is quantified in terms of the negativity of the Wigner function and the entanglement potential. Filtering of the vacuum from a coherent state is almost like the photon-addition. However, filtering makes the state more resilient against dissipation than photon-addition. Vacuum state filtered coherent states perform better than the photon-added coherent states for a two-way quantum key dist…
We propose a feasible scheme to realize the optical entanglement of single-photon-added coherent state (SPACS) and show that, besides the Sanders entangled coherent state, the entangled SPACS also leads to new forms of hybrid entanglement of quantum Fock state and classical coherent state. We probe the essential difference of two types of hybrid entangled state (HES). This HES provides a novel link between the discrete- and the continuous-variable entanglement in a natural way.
Probabilistic amplification through photon addition, at the output of an Mach-Zehnder interferometer is discussed for a coherent input state. When a metric of signal to noise ratio is considered, nondeterministic, noiseless amplification of a coherent state shows improvement over a standard coherent state, for the general addition of $m$ photons. The efficiency of realizable implementation of photon addition is also considered and shows how the collected statistics of a post selected state, depend on this efficiency. We also consider the effects of photon loss and inefficient detectors.
We develop a technique for generating multi-photon nonclassical states via interference between coherent and Fock states using quantum catalysis. By modulating the coherent field strength, the number of catalyst photons and the ratio of the beam splitter upon which they interfere, a wide range of nonclassical phenomena can be created, including squeezing of up to 1.25 dB, anti- and super-bunched photon statistics and states exhibiting over 90% fidelity to displaced coherent superposition states. We perform quantum catalysis experimentally, showing tunability into the nonclassical regime. Our p…
In this work, we consider a two-level system (TLS) coupled to a one-dimensional continuum of bosonic modes in a transmission line. Using the master equation approach, a method for determining the photon number distribution of the scattered field is outlined. Specifically, results for the reflected field when driving the TLS with a coherent pulse are given. While the one-photon probability is enhanced compared to the incident coherent field, the system is still not a good deterministic single-photon source. Extending the system to contain two separate transmission lines, however, output fields …
In this paper we investigate the security of continuous variable BB84 quantum key distribution protocol using single photon added then subtracted squeezed coherent state SPASSCS. It's found that the SPASSCS is a non-Gaussian and nonclassical state. Its non-Gaussianity and non-classicality are exhibited via the Wigner function. It's shown that the proposed state is generally robust against the eavesdropping strategies, such as intercept-resend attack and superior channel attack. Further, a comparative study has proved the strong efficiency of the proposed state over coherent state, squeezed coh…
The addition of a photon into the same mode as a coherent state produces a nonclassical state that has interesting features, including quadrature squeezing and a sub-Poissonian photon-number distribution. The squeezed nature of photon-added coherent (PAC) states potentially offers an advantage in quantum sensing applications. Previous theoretical works have employed a single-mode treatment of PAC states. Here, we use a continuous-mode approach that allows us to model PAC state pulses. We study the properties of a single-photon and coherent state wavepacket superimposed with variable temporal a…
Non-equilibrium photon correlations of coherently excited single quantum systems can reveal their internal quantum dynamics and provide spectroscopic access. Here we propose and discuss the fundamentals of a coherent photon coincidence spectroscopy based on the application of laser pulses with variable delay and the detection of an time-averaged two-photon coincidence rate. For demonstration, two simple but important cases, i.e., an exciton - biexciton in a quantum dot and two coupled quantum emitters, are investigated based on quantum dynamics simulations demonstrating that this nonlinear spe…
A class of states of the electromagnetic field involving superpositions of all the excited states above a specified low energy eigenstate of the electromagnetic field is introduced. These states and the photon-added coherent states are shown to be the limiting cases of a generalized photon-added coherent states. This new class of states is nonclassical, non-Gaussian and has equal uncertainties in the field quadratures. For suitable choices of parameters, these uncertainties are very close to those of the coherent states. Nevertheless, these states exhibit sub-Poissonian photon number distribut…
It is well-known that some nonlinear phenomena such as strong photon blockade are hard to be observed in optomechanical system with current experimental technology. Here, we present a coherent feedback control strategy in which a linear cavity is coherently controlled by an optomechanical controller in a feedback manner. The coherent feedback loop transfers and enhances quantum nonlinearity from the controller to the controlled cavity, which makes it possible to observe strong nonlinear effects in either linear cavity or optomechanical cavity. More interestingly, we find that the strong photon…
It is shown that the addition of down-converted photon pairs to coherent laser light enhances the N-photon phase sensitivity due to the quantum interference between components of the same total photon number. Since most of the photons originate from the coherent laser light, this method of obtaining non-classical N-photon states is much more efficient than methods based entirely on parametrically down-converted photons. Specifically, it is possible to achieve an optimal phase sensitivity of about delta phi^2=1/N^(3/2), equal to the geometric mean of the standard quantum limit and the Heisenber…
We introduce the entangled coherent state representation, which provides a powerful technique for efficiently and elegantly describing and analyzing quantum optics sources and detectors while respecting the photon number superselection rule that is satisfied by all known quantum optics experiments. We apply the entangled coherent state representation to elucidate and resolve the longstanding puzzles of the coherence of a laser output field, interference between two number states, and dichotomous interpretations of quantum teleportation of coherent states.
We develop an all-optical scheme to generate superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable coherent states in traveling optical fields. It non-deterministically distills coherent state superpositions (CSSs) with large amplitudes out of CSSs with small amplitudes using inefficient photon detection. The small CSSs required to produce CSSs with larger amplitudes are extremely well approximated by squeezed single photons. We discuss some remarkable features of this scheme: it effectively purifies mixed initial states emitted from inefficient single photon sources and boosts negativity of Wigne…
To overcome fundamental limitations of the πoptical pulse-induced population inversion and optical decay-caused short storage time in conventional photon echoes, a coherent control of collective atoms is studied for inversion-free, optical decay-halted photon echoes, where the constraint of photon storage time is now replaced by a spin population decay process. Using phase-controlled double rephasing, an inversion-free photon echo scheme is obtained, where no spontaneous or stimulated emission-driven quantum noise exists. Thus, the present method can be applied for ultralong quantum memories i…
Beam splitter mediated entanglement of nonlinear photon-added coherent states was studied by Honarasa, Bagheri and Gharaati [1]. We believe that this work contains errors in numerical computations of linear entropy and Mandel parameter which lead to wrong conclusions. We point out the possible errors and describe the necessary corrections. The conclusions based on our arguments are in complete agreement with previously published literature.
We report on the experimental generation of an entangled state with a spectrally pure heralded single-photon state and a weak coherent state. By choosing group-velocity matching in the nonlinear crystal, our system for producing entangled photons was 60 times brighter than that in the earlier experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 240401 (2003)], with no need of bandpass filters. This entanglement system is useful for quantum information protocols that require indistinguishable photons from independent sources.
The development of efficient protocols for pure and mixed states preparation is challenging task. Most of the theory of quantum information applications has been developed for fully coherent or completely incoherent light. However, in many situations of interest partially coherent light has been proved to be a more robust model of radiation. In this paper the underpinning theory of two photon amplitude functions for down-converted fields with partially coherent pump beams is investigated. By using the generalised Siegert relations and the coherent mode representation of the cross spectral dens…
We construct photon modulated coherent states of a generalized isotonic oscillator by expanding the newly introduced superposed operator through Weyl ordering method. We evaluate the parameter $A_3$ and the $s$-parameterized quasi probability distribution function to confirm the non - classical nature of the states. We also calculate the identities related with the quadrature squeezing to explore the squeezing property of the states. Finally, we investigate the fidelity between the photon modulated coherent states and coherent states to quantify the non-Gaussianity of the states. The construct…
Interference of two photons at a beamsplitter is at the core of many quantum photonic technologies, such as quantum key distribution or linear-optics quantum computing. Observing high-visibility interference is challenging because of the difficulty of realizing indistinguishable single-photon sources. Here, we perform a two-photon interference experiment using phase-randomized weak coherent states with different mean photon numbers. We place a tight upper bound on the expected coincidences for the case when the incident wavepackets contain single photons, allowing us to observe the Hong-Ou-Man…
The prototype quantum random number (random bit) generators (QRNG) consists of one photon at a time falling on a $50:50$ beam splitter followed by random detection in one or the other other output beams due to the irreducible probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. Due to the difficulties in producing single photons on demand, in practice, pulses of weak coherent (laser) light are used. In this paper we take a different approach, one that uses moderate coherent light. It is shown that a QRNG can be implemented by performing photon-number parity measurements. For moderate coherent light, the…
One of the most striking quantum phenomena is photon bunching resulting from coincidently impinging two-indistinguishable photons on a beam splitter (BS) from two different input ports. Such a nonclassical feature has also been observed even between two independent light sources through either coherence optics resulting in phase locking or post-selected measurements such as quantum beating-based gating. Recently, BS physics regarding quantum features has been discussed using pure coherence optics based on phase basis superposition of the BS. Here, we experimentally demonstrate coherent photon …
We present photonic quantum computing architectures that can deal with both probabilistic (heralded) generation of single photons and probabilistic gates without making use of coherent switching. The only required dynamical element is the controllable absorption of all photons in a given mode. While the architectures in theory scale polynomially in the resources required for universal quantum computation, as presented their overhead is large and they are illustrative extreme points in the configuration space of photonic approaches, rather than a recipe that anybody should seriously pursue. The…
We investigate the single-photon propagation in the one-dimensional waveguide coupled to $N$ two-level atoms. For a waveguide coupled to $N$ distant atoms, the transparency can be induced by coherent interaction at resonance for an $even$ $number$ of $N$, while for an $odd$ $number$ of $N$, the photon can be fully reflected. We then can switch the photon transport by controlling the atomic number. For a waveguide coupled to a small atomic ensemble of $N$ atoms in the same position, the transparency disappears, and the photonic transport property displays a jump behavior near the resonance poin…
State $g^{\hat{n}}\hat{a}^{†m}\left\vert α\right\rangle $ and state $\hat{a}^{†m}g^{\hat{n}}\left\vert α\right\rangle $ are same to state $\hat{a}^{†m}\left\vert gα\right\rangle $, which is called as multi-photon-addition amplified coherent state (MPAACS) by us. Here, $\hat{n}$, $\hat{a}^{†}$, $\left\vert α\right\rangle $, $g$ ( $\geq 1$), and $m$ are photon number operator, creation operator, coherent state, gain facor, and an interger, respectively. We study mathematical and physical properties for these MPAACSs, including normalization, photon component analysis, Wigner function, effective …
We theoretically investigate the phase sensitivity with parity detection on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a coherent state combined with a photon-added squeezed vacuum state. When the phase shift approaches zero, the squeezed vacuum state is indeed the optimal state within a constraint on the average number of photons. However, when the phase shift to be estimated slightly deviates from zero, the optimal state is neither the squeezed vacuum state nor the photon-subtracted squeezed vacuum state, but the photon-added squeezed vacuum state when they carry many photons. Finally, we show that …
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.
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.
In this paper, We investigate three-mode photon-added Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled coherent states by repeatedly operating the photon-added operator on the GHZ entangled coherent states. The product of two Laguerre polynomials is demonstrated to be connected to the normalizing constant. The influence of the operation on the non-classical and non-Gaussian behavior of the GHZ entangled coherent states is investigated. Sub-Poissonian statistics, such as Mandel's parameter and the negativity of the Wigner function, show that non-classical properties can enhance GHZ entangled coheren…
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…