Quantum State Reconstruction of the Single-Photon Fock State
Abstract
We have reconstructed the quantum state of optical pulses containing single photons using the method of phase-randomized pulsed optical homodyne tomography. The single-photon Fock state \|1> was prepared using conditional measurements on photon pairs born in the process of parametric down-conversion. A probability distribution of the phase-averaged electric field amplitudes with a strongly non-Gaussian shape is obtained with the total detection efficiency of (55+/-1)%. The angle-averaged Wigner function reconstructed from this distribution shows a strong dip reaching classically impossible negative values around the origin of the phase space.
- Publication:
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Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- July 2001
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:quant-ph/0101051
- Bibcode:
- 2001PhRvL..87e0402L
- Keywords:
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- Quantum Physics
- E-Print:
- 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letters. Avoid downloading PDF due to extremely poor figure resolution. Use Postscript