Single-photon excitation of a coherent state: Catching the elementary step of stimulated light emission

By Alessandro Zavatta, S. Viciani, Marco Bellini. 2005

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When a single quantum of electromagnetic field excitation is added to the same spatiotemporal mode of a coherent state, a new field state is generated that exhibits intermediate properties between those of the two parents. Such a single-photon-added coherent state is obtained by the action of the photon creation operator on a coherent state and can thus be regarded as the result of the most elementary excitation process of a classical light field. Here we present and describe in depth the experimental realization of such states and their complete analysis by means of a novel ultrafast, time-domain, quantum homodyne tomography technique clearly revealing their nonclassical character.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6286a35e47148069ee218b3db7f76401ce8811a6