Abstract
A quantum state of light is the excitation of a particular spatiotemporal mode of the electromagnetic field. A precise control of the mode structure is therefore essential for processing, detecting, and using photonic states in novel quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate an adaptive scheme, combining techniques from the fields of ultrafast coherent control and quantum optics, for probing the arbitrary complex spectrotemporal profile of an ultrashort quantum light pulse. The ability to access the modal structure of a quantum light state could boost the capacity of current quantum information protocols.
- Received 4 May 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.053602
© 2012 American Physical Society
Focus
Measuring the Shape of a Photon
Published 3 August 2012
Researchers measure the complex “shape” of individual photons, which could lead to new ways of encoding information.
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