The photon density operator function is used to describe the propagation of single-photon pulses through a turbulent atmosphere. The effects of statistical properties of photon source and the effects of a random phase screen on the variance of photon counting are studied. A procedure for reducing the total noise is discussed. The physical mechanisms responsible for this reduction are explained.
Orbital angular momentum of photons is an intriguing system for the storage and transmission of quantum information, but it is rapidly degraded by atmospheric turbulence. Understanding the noise processes that affect photons is essential if we desire to protect them. In this paper we use the infinitesimal propagation equation of Roux to derive a discrete Lindblad equation, and numerically study the form of the most relevant Lindblad operators. We find that the dominant Lindblad operators are those that shift the angular momentum by one unit. We explore possible schemes to protect quantum infor…
The effect of a random phase screen on laser beam wander in a turbulent atmosphere is studied theoretically. The method of photon distribution function is used to describe the photon kinetics of both weak and strong turbulence. By bringing together analytical and numerical calculations, we have obtained the variance of beam centroid deflections caused by scattering on turbulent eddies. It is shown that an artificial distortion of the initial coherence of the radiation can be used to decrease the wandering effect. The physical mechanism responsible for this reduction and applicability of our ap…
We give a quantum information-theoretic description of an ideal propagating CW laser field and reinterpret typical quantum-optical experiments in light of this. In particular we show that contrary to recent claims [T. Rudolph and B. C. Sanders, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 077903 (2001)], a conventional laser can be used for quantum teleportation with continuous variables and for generating continuous-variable entanglement. Optical coherence is not required, but phase coherence is. We also show that coherent states play a priveleged role in the description of laser light.
Nonclassical properties of light propagating through the turbulent atmosphere are studied. We demonstrate by numerical simulation that the probability distribution of the transmission coefficient, which characterizes the effects of the atmosphere on the quantum state of light, can be reconstructed by homodyne detection. Nonclassical photon-statistics and, more generally, nonclassical Glauber-Sudarshan functions appear to be more robust against turbulence for weak light fields rather than for bright ones.
We employ ptychography, a phase-retrieval imaging technique, to show experimentally for the first time that a partially coherent high-energy matter (electron) wave emanating from an extended source can be decomposed into a set of mutually independent modes of minimal rank. Partial coherence significantly determines the optical transfer properties of an electron microscope and so there has been much work on this subject. However, previous studies have employed forms of interferometry to determine spatial coherence between discrete points in the wavefield. Here we use the density matrix to deriv…
This work analyses the temporal coherence and correlation of counterpropagating twin photons generated in a quasi-phase matched nonlinear cristal by spontaneous parametric-down conversion. We find out different pictures depending on the pump pulse duration relative to two characteristic temporal scales, determined respectively by the temporal separation between the counter-propagating and the co-propagating wavepackets. When the pump duration is intermediate between the two scales, we show a transition from a highly entangled state to an almost separable state, with strongly asymmetric spectra…
We propose a new method of resonant enhancement of optical Kerr nonlinearity using multi-level atomic coherence. The enhancement is accompanied by suppression of the other linear and nonlinear susceptibility terms of the medium. We show that the effect results in a modification of the nonlinear Faraday rotation of light propagating in an Rb87 vapor cell by changing the ellipticity of the light.
Due to the transfer of the angular spectrum of the pump beam to the two-photon state in spontaneous parametric down-conversion the generated twin photons are entangled in Hermite-Gaussian (HG) modes. This enables one using HG modes as an alphabet for quantum communication. For global quantum communication purposes, we derive an analytic expression for two-photon detection probability in terms of HG modes taking into account the effects of the turbulent atmosphere. Our result is more general as it accounts for the propagation of both, signal and idler photons through the atmosphere, as opposed …
The method of photon distribution function (PDF) is used to study fluctuations of light beams propagating through a turbulent atmosphere. Our analysis concerns the regime of saturated fluctuations. The focus is on the phenomena of beam wandering and the effect of partial coherence on photon density fluctuations. It is shown that the size of the quasiclassical part of wandering decreases with the propagation distance, while the quantum part increases. We explain this qualitative difference by beam fragmentation, which is accompanied by a loss of correlation between individual parts. The effect …
The evolution of an entangled photon state propagating through a turbulent atmosphere is formulated in terms of a set of coupled first order differential equations, by using an infinitesimal propagation approach. The orbital angular momentum (OAM) basis is used to described the density matrix of the state. Although the analysis is done in the paraxial limit for a monochromatic optical field, the formalism is comprehensive in the sense that it does not require any assumptions about the strength of the turbulence and it can incorporate any spectral model for the turbulence. As a comparative exam…
The photon density operator function is used to calculate light beam propagation through turbulent atmosphere. A kinetic equation for the photon distribution function is derived and solved using the method of characteristics. Optical wave correlations are described in terms of photon trajectories that depend on fluctuations of the refractive index. It is shown that both linear and quadratic disturbances produce sizable effects for long-distance propagation. The quadratic terms are shown to suppress the correlation of waves with different wave vectors. We examine the intensity fluctuations of p…
Quasi-particles are elementary excitations of condensed matter quantum phases. Demonstrating that they keep quantum coherence while propagating is a fundamental issue for their manipulation for quantum information tasks. Here, we consider anyons, the fractionally charged quasi-particles 20 of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect occurring in two-dimensional electronic conductors in high magnetic fields. They obey anyonic statistics, intermediate between fermionic and bosonic. Surprisingly, anyons show large quantum coherence when transmitted through the localized states of electronic Fabry-Pérot…
We put forward an experimental configuration to observe transverse Anderson localization of partially coherent light beams with a tunable degree of first-order coherence. The scheme makes use of entangled photons propagating in disordered waveguide arrays, and is based on the unique relationship between the degree of entanglement of a pair of photons and the coherence properties of the individual photons constituting the pair. The scheme can be readily implemented with current waveguide-on-a-chip technology, and surprisingly, the tunability of the coherence properties of the individual photons…
In this paper, we investigate the quantum coherence for two flavor neutrinos propagating in a Schwarzschild metric. In fact, this issue is explored both qualitatively via calculating the parameter $K_{3}$ in Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) and also quantitatively by evaluating the $l_{1}$-norm, ${\cal C}(ρ)$. Using the weak field approximations, we show that the gravitational effects decrease the maximum value of $K_{3}$ for some intervals of energy such a way that there is no violation, while it leaves the maximum amount of the quantum coherence, ${\cal C}(ρ)$ unchanged.
Single-photon detection is an essential component in many experiments in quantum optics, but remains challenging in the microwave domain. We realize a quantum non-demolition detector for propagating microwave photons and characterize its performance using a single-photon source. To this aim we implement a cavity-assisted conditional phase gate between the incoming photon and a superconducting artificial atom. By reading out the state of this atom in single shot, we reach an internal photon detection fidelity of 71%, limited by the coherence properties of the qubit. By characterizing the cohere…
We investigate the coherence properties of pairs of counter-propagating atomic clouds, produced in superradiant Rayleigh scattering off atomic condensates. It is shown that these clouds exhibit long-range spatial coherence and strong nonclassical density cross-correlations, which make this scheme a promising candidate for the production of highly directional nonclassically correlated atomic pulses.
We present a detailed numerical study of the dynamics of a disordered one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates in position and momentum space. We particularly focus on the region where non-linearity and disorder simultaneously effect the time propagation of the condensate as well as the possible interference between various parts of the matter wave. We report oscillation between spatially extended and localized behavior for the propagating condensate which dies down with increasing non-linearity. We also report intriguing behavior of the phase fluctuation and the coherence properties of the m…
We investigate the behavior of the light pulse in $Lambda$-type cold atomic gases with two counterpropagating control lights with equal strength by directly simulating the dynamic equations and exploring the dispersion relation. Our analysis shows that, depending on the length $L_0$ of the stored wave packet and the decay rate $γ$ of ground-spin coherence, the recreated light can behave differently. For long $L_0$ and/or large $γ$, a stationary light pulse is produced, while two propagating light pulses appear for short $L_0$ and/or small $γ$. In the $γ\to 0$ limit, the light always splits int…
