Interferometric Imaging Using Shared Quantum Entanglement.

Quantum entanglement-based imaging promises significantly increased resolution by extending the spatial separation of optical collection apertures used in very-long-baseline interferometry for astronomy and geodesy. We report a tabletop entanglement-based interferometric imaging technique that utilizes two entangled field modes serving as a phase reference between two apertures. The spatial distribution of a simulated thermal light source is determined by interfering light collected at each aperture with one of the entangled fields and performing joint measurements. This experiment demonstrates the ability of entanglement to implement interferometric imaging.

Heralding Multiple Photonic Pulsed Bell Pairs via Frequency-Resolved Entanglement Swapping.

Entanglement is a unique property of quantum systems and an essential resource for many quantum technologies. The ability to transfer or swap entanglement between systems is an important protocol in quantum information science. Entanglement swapping between photons forms the basis of distributed quantum networks. Here an experiment demonstrating entanglement swapping from two independent multimode time-frequency entangled sources is presented, resulting in multiple heralded frequency-mode Bell states. Entanglement in the heralded states is verified by measuring conditional anticorrelated joint spectra and quantum beating in two-photon interference. Our experiment heralds up to five orthogonal Bell pairs within the same setup, and this number is ultimately limited only by the entanglement of the initial sources.

Temporal mode transformations by sequential time and frequency phase modulation for applications in quantum information science.

Controlling the temporal mode shape of quantum light pulses has wide ranging application to quantum information science and technology. Techniques have been developed to control the bandwidth, allow shifting in the time and frequency domains, and perform mode-selective beam-splitter-like transformations. However, there is no present scheme to perform targeted multimode unitary transformations on temporal modes. Here we present a practical approach to realize general transformations for temporal modes. We show theoretically that any unitary transformation on temporal modes can be performed using a series of phase operations in the time and frequency domains. Numerical simulations show that several key transformations on temporal modes can be performed with greater than 95% fidelity using experimentally feasible specifications.

Single-photon characterization by two-photon spectral interferometry.

Single-photon sources are a fundamental resource in quantum optics and quantum information science. Photons with differing spectral and temporal shapes do not interfere well and inhibit the performance of quantum applications such as linear optics quantum computing, boson sampling, and quantum networks. Indistinguishability and purity of photons emitted from different sources are crucial properties for many quantum applications. The ability to determine the state of single-photon sources therefore provides a means to assess their quality, compare different sources, and provide feedback for source tuning. Here, we propose and demonstrate a single-configuration experimental method enabling complete characterization of the spectral-temporal state of a pulsed single-photon source having both pure and mixed states. The method involves interference of the unknown single-photon source with a reference at a balanced beam splitter followed by frequency-resolved coincidence detection at the outputs. Fourier analysis of the joint-spectral two-photon interference pattern reveals the density matrix of the single-photon source in the frequency basis. We present an experimental realization of this method for pure and mixed state pulsed single-photon sources.

Modal analysis for noise characterization and propagation in a femtosecond oscillator.

We study noise propagation dynamics in a femtosecond oscillator by injecting external noise on the pump intensity. We utilize a spectrally resolved homodyne detection technique that enables simultaneous measurement of amplitude and phase quadrature noises of different spectral bands of the oscillator. We perform a modal analysis of the oscillator noise in which each mode corresponds to a particular temporal/spectral shape of the pulsed light. We compare this modal approach with the conventional noise detection methods and find the superiority of our method, in particular unveiling a complete physical picture of noise distribution in the femtosecond oscillator.

Measuring the Single-Photon Temporal-Spectral Wave Function.

Temporal-spectral modes of light provide a fundamental window into the nature of quantum systems and offer a robust means for information encoding. Methods to precisely characterize the temporal-spectral state of light at the single-photon level thus play a central role in understanding single-photon sources and their applications in emerging optical quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate an optical reference-free method, which melds techniques from ultrafast metrology and single-photon spectral detection, to characterize the pulse-mode structure of heralded single photons.

Analysis and filtering of phase noise in an optical frequency comb at the quantum limit to improve timing measurements.

It is shown that the sensitivity of a highly sensitive homodyne timing measurement scheme with femtosecond (fs) lasers [Phys. Rev. Lett.101, 123601 (2008).] is limited by carrier-envelope-phase (CEO) noise. We describe the use of a broadband passive cavity to analyze the phase noise of a Ti:Sapphire oscillator relative to the standard quantum limit. This cavity also filters the lowest levels of classical noise at sidebands above 100 kHz detection frequency. Leading to quantum-limited CEO-phase noise at millisecond time scales, it can improve the sensitivity of the homodyne pulse timing measurement by 10 dB.