Abstract
We study the problem of determining the photon number statistics of an unknown quantum state using conjugate optical homodyne detection. We quantify the information gain in a single-shot measurement and show that the photon number statistics can be recovered in repeated measurements on an ensemble of identical input states without scanning the phase of the input state or randomizing the phase of the local oscillator used in homodyne detection. We demonstrate how the expectation maximization algorithm and Bayesian inference can be utilized to facilitate the reconstruction and illustrate our approach by conducting experiments to study the photon number distributions of a weak coherent state and a thermal state source.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2276-2290 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Optics Express |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 20 2020 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy (DOE) will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). We acknowledge helpful comments from Ryan Bennink, Warren Grice, Charles Lim and Nicholas Peters.