FUNDAMENTAL LIMITS TO OBSERVATIONS OF SQUEEZING VIA BALANCED HOMODYNE DETECTION

SL BRAUNSTEIN, DD CROUCH

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A photodetector's electronic bandwidth is the frequency range over which beats between different frequencies in the input can be observed in the output. The output of a balanced homodyne detector, the prototypical device for detecting squeezed light, consists of beats between a signal to be measured and a local oscillator. Beats between the signal and quantum local-oscillator fluctuations lead to noise that degrades the observed squeezing. Through wide-band calculations, we show that this noise contains contributions from the entire signal bandwidth, even when this bandwidth is orders of magnitude larger than the detector's electronic bandwidth. This allows us to place an upper limit on the total power that can enter the detector's signal port (both signal and extraneous light) within the detector's optical bandwidth in order for a given level of squeezing to be observable.
Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Pages (from-to)330-337
Number of pages8
JournalPhysical Review A
Volume43
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 1991

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