Polarisation tomography of macro- and mesoscopic quantum states of light

          @misc{ pirsa_08080053,
            doi = {10.48660/08080053},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/08080053},
            author = {Chekhova, Maria},
            keywords = {},
            language = {en},
            title = {Polarisation tomography of macro- and mesoscopic quantum states of light},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2008},
            month = {aug},
            note = {PIRSA:08080053 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
          

Abstract

We report an experiment on reconstructing the quantum state of bright (macroscopic) polarization-squeezed light generated in a birefringent (polarization-maintaining) fibre due to the Kerr nonlinearity. The nonlinearity acts on both H and V polarization components, producing quadrature squeezing; by controlling the phase shift between the H and V components one can make the state squeezed in any Stokes observable. The tomography is performed by measuring histograms for a series of Stokes observables, and the resulting histograms (tomograms) are processed in a way similar to the classical 3D Radon transformation. At the output, we obtain the polarization Q-function, which in the case of large photon numbers coincides with the polarization W-function. An interesting extension of the performed experiment will be going down to lower photon numbers (mesoscopic quantum states), and we expect a different behaviour of polarization W and Q functions in this case. An experiment on producing such states is discussed.