Abstract
Within the second-quantization framework, we develop a formalism for describing a spatially multimode optical field diffracted through a spatial mask and show that this process can be described as an effective interaction between various spatial modes. We demonstrate a method to calculate the quantum state in the diffracted optical field for any given quantum state in the incident field. We also give several additional examples of how the theory works, for various quantum input states, which may be easily tested in the laboratory, including two single-mode squeezed vacuums, single- and two-photon inputs, where we show that the diffraction process produces a two-mode squeezed vacuum, number-path entanglement, and a Hong-Ou-Mandel-like effect analogous to that of a beam splitter.
8 More- Received 29 March 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.023829
©2017 American Physical Society