Direct observation of sub-binomial light
Abstract
Nonclassical states of light are necessary resources for quantum technologies such as cryptography, computation and the definition of metrological standards. Observing signatures of nonclassicality generally requires inferring either the photon number distribution or a quasi-probability distribution indirectly from a set of measurements. Here, we report an experiment in which the nonclassical character of families of quantum states is assessed by direct inspection of the outcomes from a multiplexed photon counter. This scheme does not register the actual photon number distribution; the statistics of the detector clicks alone serve as a witness of nonclassicality, as proposed by Sperling et al. in Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 093601 (2012). Our work paves a way for the practical characterisation of increasingly sophisticated states and detectors.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1302.0229,
title = {Direct observation of sub-binomial light},
author = {Tim J. Bartley and Gaia Donati and Xian-Min Jin and Animesh Datta and Marco Barbieri and Ian A. Walmsley},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.0229},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures. References added. Note that Eq. (2) has been corrected in this version from the published manuscript. We are grateful to Arturo Lezama for pointing out the error