Single-photon excitation of a coherent state: catching the elementary step of stimulated light emission
Abstract
When a single quantum of electromagnetic field excitation is added to the same spatio-temporal 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 non-classical character.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0508094,
title = {Single-photon excitation of a coherent state: catching the elementary step of stimulated light emission},
author = {Alessandro Zavatta and Silvia Viciani and Marco Bellini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0508094},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
9 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A