Measurement of the transverse spatial quantum state of light at the single-photon level: publisher's note.

This publisher's note amends the author listing of Opt. Lett.30, 3365 (2005)OPLEDP0146-959210.1364/OL.30.003365.

The cultivable microbiota of primary and secondary infected root canals, their susceptibility to antibiotics and association with the signs and symptoms of infection.

AIM: To examine the presence of microbial species in primary and secondary infections and identify the signs and symptoms associated with them. METHODOLOGY: A total number of 37 root canals from 33 patients undergoing root canal treatment were selected. Samples were taken using a sterile paper point following chemomechanical canal instrumentation. Microbiological identification was performed by macromorphological, micromorphological and commercial biochemical tests (ATB system). The antibiotic susceptibility profile of isolated Enterococcus, Streptococcus and Propionibacterium spp. was evaluated. RESULTS: A total number of 54 species were isolated. The most common was E. faecalis followed by Propionibacterium acnes and Streptococcus spp. Five multidrug-resistant enterococcal strains were isolated. However, resistance to linezolid or glycopeptides was not found. Radiolucency was observed significantly more often in symptomatic infections (P = 0.0061) caused by Actinomyces spp. than in asymptomatic ones. CONCLUSIONS: Enterococci and streptococci were the most commonly isolated bacteria from root canals. The resistance of enterococci to many antimicrobials may pose a problem in their eradication.

Experimental extraction of secure correlations from a noisy private state.

We report experimental generation of a noisy entangled four-photon state that exhibits a separation between the secure key contents and distillable entanglement, a hallmark feature of the recently established quantum theory of private states. The privacy analysis, based on the full tomographic reconstruction of the prepared state, is utilized in a proof-of-principle key generation. The inferiority of distillation-based strategies to extract the key is exposed by an implementation of an entanglement distillation protocol for the produced state.

Optimal quantum phase estimation.

By using a systematic optimization approach, we determine quantum states of light with definite photon number leading to the best possible precision in optical two-mode interferometry. Our treatment takes into account the experimentally relevant situation of photon losses. Our results thus reveal the benchmark for precision in optical interferometry. Although this boundary is generally worse than the Heisenberg limit, we show that the obtained precision beats the standard quantum limit, thus leading to a significant improvement compared to classical interferometers. We furthermore discuss alternative states and strategies to the optimized states which are easier to generate at the cost of only slightly lower precision.

Measurement of the transverse spatial quantum state of light at the single-photon level.

We present an experimental method to measure the transverse spatial quantum state of an optical field in coordinate space at the single-photon level. The continuous-variable measurements are made with a photon-counting, parity-inverting Sagnac interferometer based on all-reflecting optics. The technique provides a large numerical aperture without distorting the shape of the wavefront, does not introduce astigmatism, and allows for characterization of fully or partially coherent optical fields at the single-photon level. Measurements of the transverse spatial Wigner functions for highly attenuated coherent beams are presented and compared with theoretical predictions.

Fidelity balance in quantum operations.

I derive a tight bound between the quality of estimating the state of a single copy of a d-level system, and the degree the initial state has to be altered in the course of this procedure. This result provides a complete analytical description of the quantum mechanical trade-off between the information gain and the quantum state disturbance expressed in terms of mean fidelities. I also discuss consequences of this bound for quantum teleportation using nonmaximally entangled states.

Generation of correlated photons in controlled spatial modes by downconversion in nonlinear waveguides.

We report the observation of correlated photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion of a 400-nm pump pulse in a quasi-phase-matched KTiOPO(4) nonlinear waveguide. The highest ratio of coincidence to single-photon count rates observed near 800 nm exceeds 18%. This suggests that nonlinear waveguides will be a promising source of correlated photons for metrology and quantum information processing applications. We also discuss possibilities of controlling the spatial characteristics of the downconverted photons produced in multimode waveguide structures.

Fractional Talbot effect in phase space: A compact summation formula.

A phase space description of the fractional Talbot effect, occurring in a one--dimensional Fresnel diffraction from a periodic grating, is presented. Using the phase space formalism a compact summation formula for the Wigner function at rational multiples of the Talbot distance is derived. The summation formula shows that the fractional Talbot image in the phase space is generated by a finite sum of spatially displaced Wigner functions of the source field.

Sampling quantum phase space with squeezed states.

We study the application of squeezed states in a quantum optical scheme for direct sampling of the phase space by photon counting. We prove that the detection setup with a squeezed coherent probe field is equivalent to the probing of the squeezed signal field with a coherent state. An example of the Schr odinger cat state measurement shows that the use of squeezed states allows one to detect clearly the interference between distinct phase space components despite losses through the unused output port of the setup.