T. Sh. Iskhakov

High-visibility multiphoton interference of Hanbury Brown–Twiss type for classical light

Difference-phase (or Hanbury Brown\char21{}Twiss type) intensity interference of classical light is considered in higher orders in the intensity. It is shown that, while the visibility of sum-phase (NOON-type) interference for classical sources drops with the order of interference, the visibility of difference-phase interference has opposite behavior. For three-photon and four-photon interference of two coherent sources, the visibility can be as high as 81.8% and 94.4%, respectively. High-visibility three-photon and four-photon interference of space-time and polarization types has been observed in experiment, for both coherent and pseudothermal light.

Bright squeezed-vacuum source with 1.1 spatial mode

Bright squeezed vacuum, a macroscopic nonclassical state of light, can be obtained at the output of a strongly pumped nonseeded traveling-wave optical parametric amplifier (OPA). By constructing the OPA of two consecutive crystals separated by a large distance, we make the squeezed vacuum spatially single-mode without a significant decrease in the brightness or squeezing.

Spectral properties of high-gain parametric down-conversion.

High-gain parametric down-conversion (PDC) is a source of bright squeezed vacuum, which is a macroscopic nonclassical state of light and a promising candidate for quantum information applications. Here we study its properties, such as the intensity spectral width and the spectral width of pairwise correlations. In agreement with the theory, we observe an increase in the spectral width by 27% compared with the low-gain PDC. Frequency cross- and auto-correlations are registered by measuring the reduction of noise in the difference of PDC intensities at various pairs of wavelengths. The noise reduction plots also demonstrate super-bunching typical for collinear frequency-degenerate PDC.

Two methods for detecting nonclassical correlations in parametric scattering of light

Two methods for studying nonclassical correlations at the output of a two-mode parametric amplifier—first, the measurement of normalized Glauber correlation functions and, second, the measurement of the variance of the photon-number difference in conjugate modes—are compared. It is shown theoretically and experimentally that the corresponding quantities, the normalized correlation function, and the noise reduction factor have significantly different dependences on the main system parameters such as the parametric gain, optical losses, photo-detector quantum efficiency, and the detected angular and frequency bands.

Nonlinear interferometer for tailoring the frequency spectrum of bright squeezed vacuum

We propose a method for tailoring the frequency spectrum of bright squeezed vacuum by generating it in a nonlinear interferometer, consisting of two down-converting nonlinear crystals separated by a dispersive medium. Due to a faster dispersive spreading of higher order Schmidt modes, the spectral width of the radiation at the output is reduced as the length of the dispersive medium is increased. Preliminary results show 30% spectral narrowing.

Macroscopic Hong–Ou–Mandel interference

We report on a Hong–Ou–Mandel interference experiment for twin beams with photon numbers per mode as large as 106 generated via high-gain parametric down conversion (PDC). The standard technique of coincidence counting leads in this case to a dip with a very low visibility. By measuring, instead of coincidence counting rate, the variance of the photon-number difference, we observe an extremely well-pronounced peak. From the shape of the peak, one can infer information about the spectral properties of the PDC radiation, including the number of frequency/temporal modes.

Direct Schmidt number measurement of high-gain parametric down conversion

In this work we estimate the transverse Schmidt number for the bipartite high-gain parametric down conversion state by means of second-order intensity correlation function measurement. Assuming that the number of modes is equal in both beams we determine the Schmidt number considering only one of the subsystems. The obtained results demonstrate that this approach is equally efficient over the whole propagation of the state from the near field to the far field regions of its emitter.

Interference of macroscopic beams on a beam splitter: phase uncertainty converted into photon-number uncertainty

Squeezed-vacuum twin beams, commonly generated through parametric down-conversion, are known to have perfect photon-number correlations. According to the Heisenberg principle, this is accompanied by a huge uncertainty in their relative phase. By overlapping bright twin beams on a beam splitter, we convert phase fluctuations into photon-number fluctuations and observe this uncertainty as a typical ?U-shape? of the output photon-number distribution. This effect, although reported for atomic ensembles and giving hope for phase super-resolution, has never been observed for light beams. The shape of the normalized photon-number difference distribution is similar to the one that would be observed for high-order Fock states. It can be also mimicked by classical beams with artificially mixed phase, but without any perspective for phase super-resolution. The probability distribution at the beam splitter output can be used for filtering macroscopic superpositions at the input.

COMPARATIVE TEST OF TWO METHODS OF QUANTUM EFFICIENCY ABSOLUTE MEASUREMENT BASED ON SQUEEZED VACUUM DIRECT DETECTION

We realize and test in experiment a method recently proposed for measuring absolute quantum efficiency of analog photodetectors. Similar to the traditional (Klyshko) method of absolute calibration, the new one is based on the direct detection of two-mode squeezed vacuum at the output of a traveling wave OPA. However, in the new method, one measures the difference-photocurrent variance rather than the correlation function of photocurrents (number of coincidences), which makes the technique applicable for high-gain OPA. In this work we test the new method versus the traditional one for the case of photon-counting detectors where both techniques are valid.

Testing ultrafast two-photon spectral amplitudes via optical fibres

We test two-dimensional TPSA of biphoton light emitted via ultrafast spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) using the effect of group-velocity dispersion in optical fibres. Further, we apply this technique to demonstrate the engineering of biphoton spectral properties by acting on the pump pulse shape.