An Atomic Source of Quantum Light
| atmire.migration.oldid | 278 | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Lvovsky, Alexander | |
| dc.contributor.author | MacRae, Andrew | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2012-10-25T15:34:50Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2012-11-13T08:01:43Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012-10-25 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2012 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis presents the experimental demonstration of an atomic source of narrowband nonclassical states of light. Employing four-wave mixing in hot atomic Rubidium vapour, the optical states produced are naturally compatible with atomic transitions and may be thus employed in atom-based quantum communication protocols. We first demonstrate the production of two-mode intensity-squeezed light and analyze the correlations between the two produced modes. Using homodyne detection in each mode, we verify the production of two-mode quadrature-squeezed light, achieving a reduction in quadrature variance of 3 dB below the standard quantum limit. Employing conditional detection on one of the channels, we then demonstrate the generation of single-photon Fock states as well as controllable superpositions of vacuum and 1-photon states. We fully characterize the produced light by means of optical homodyne tomography and maximum likelihood estimation. The narrowband nature of the produced light yields a resolvable temporal wave-function, and we develop a method to infer this wave function from the continuous photocurrent provided by the homodyne detector. The nature of the atomic process opens the door to a new direction of research: generation of arbitrary superpositions of collective atomic states. We perform the first proof-of-principle experiment towards this new field and discuss a proposal for extending this work to obtain full control over the collective-atomic Hilbert space. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | MacRae, A. (2012). An Atomic Source of Quantum Light (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24840 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/24840 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11023/310 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Graduate Studies | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Calgary | en |
| dc.publisher.place | Calgary | en |
| dc.rights | University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. | |
| dc.subject | Physics--Atomic | |
| dc.subject | Optics | |
| dc.subject.classification | Quantum Optics | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | AMO | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Nonlinear Optics | en_US |
| dc.title | An Atomic Source of Quantum Light | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Physics and Astronomy | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Calgary | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
| ucalgary.item.requestcopy | true |