Berlin 2001 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help
Q: Quantenoptik
Q 20: Quantum Effects I
Q 20.5: Talk
Wednesday, April 4, 2001, 16:45–17:00, H 2013
Quantum homodyne tomography of the single-photon Fock state — •Thomas Aichele1, Alexander Lvovsky1, Hauke Hansen1, Oliver Benson1, Stefan Schiller2, and Jürgen Mlynek3 — 1Universität Konstanz, Fachb. Physik, Optik-Zentrum, Fach M696, 78457 Konstanz — 2Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Institut für Experimentalphysik, 40225 Düsseldorf — 3Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 10099 Berlin
Quantum states containing a definite number of photons (Fock states) are fundamental states of the quantized electromagnetical field. They are highly non-classical and reveal the wave-particle duality of light most strikingly. We present an experiment on characterization of the single-photon Fock state using the method of quantum homodyne tomography. The single-photon pulses were prepared using conditional measurements on photon pairs born in the process of parametric fluorescence. The probability distribution of the phase-averaged electrical field amplitudes with a strong non-Gaussian shape is obtained with the total detection efficiency of 55%. The phase-averaged Wigner function reconstructed from this distribution shows a minimum at the origin of the phase space reaching a classicaly impossible negative value.