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Quantum State Reconstruction of the Single-Photon Fock State

A. I. Lvovsky, H. Hansen, T. Aichele, O. Benson, J. Mlynek, and S. Schiller
Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 050402 – Published 11 July 2001
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Abstract

We have reconstructed the quantum state of optical pulses containing single photons using the method of phase-randomized pulsed optical homodyne tomography. The single-photon Fock state |1 was prepared using conditional measurements on photon pairs born in the process of parametric down-conversion. A probability distribution of the phase-averaged electric field amplitudes with a strongly non-Gaussian shape is obtained with the total detection efficiency of (55±1)%. The angle-averaged Wigner function reconstructed from this distribution shows a strong dip reaching classically impossible negative values around the origin of the phase space.

  • Received 14 March 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.050402

©2001 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

A. I. Lvovsky*, H. Hansen, T. Aichele, O. Benson, J. Mlynek, and S. Schiller

  • Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, D-78457 Konstanz, Germany

  • *Email address: Alex.Lvovsky@uni-konstanz.de
  • Present address: President, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, D-10099 Berlin, Germany.
  • Present address: Institut für Experimentalphysik, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.

See Also

Golfing with a Single Photon

Rebecca Slayton
Phys. Rev. Focus 8, 7 (2001)

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Vol. 87, Iss. 5 — 30 July 2001

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