Squeezed states of light and their applications in laser interferometers

By Roman Schnabel. 2016

546 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract According to quantum theory the energy exchange between physical systems is quantized. As a direct consequence, measurement sensitivities are fundamentally limited by quantization noise, or just ‘quantum noise’ in short. Furthermore, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle demands measurement back-action for some observables of a system if they are measured repeatedly. In both respects, squeezed states are of high interest since they show a ‘squeezed’ uncertainty, which can be used to improve the sensitivity of measurement devices beyond the usual quantum noise limits including those impacted by quantum back-action noise. Squeezed states of light can be produced with nonlinear optics, and a large variety of proof-of-principle experiments were performed in past decades. As an actual application, squeezed light has now been used for several years to improve the measurement sensitivity of GEO 600 – a laser interferometer built for the detection of gravitational waves. Given this success, squeezed light is likely to significantly contribute to the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy. This Review revisits the concept of squeezed states and two-mode squeezed states of light, with a focus on experimental observations. The distinct properties of squeezed states displayed in quadrature phase-space as well as in the photon number representation are described. The role of the light’s quantum noise in laser interferometers is summarized and the actual application of squeezed states in these measurement devices is reviewed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2a030047ee024ee302eadf3d4bac5223787e2f17

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Citations in the corpus

Roadmap on quantum light spectroscopy (2020, background): “further increase the sensitivity to gravitational waves [10].”
Modes and states in quantum optics (2019, background): “th an intense coherent state, and mode fin 2 with a squeezed vacuum state, a strategy that has been found years ago by C. Caves (Caves, 1981) and currently implemented in gravitational wave antennas (Schnabel, 2017). The approach outlined in this section therefore shows once again the optimized char”
Imaging with quantum states of light (2019, background): “With the emergence of the concepts and the way to generate quantum squeezing [88, 89] and definite number of photons states [90, 91, 40], new schemes were devised, able to harness quantum proprieties of light to reach levels of sensitivity beyond that achievable classically [92, 93, 94, 44].”