Photon-number-resolving detectors and their role in quantifying quantum correlations

Si-Hui Tan; Leonid A. Krivitsky; Berthold-Georg Englert

doi:10.1117/12.2239002

4 October 2016 Photon-number-resolving detectors and their role in quantifying quantum correlations

Si-Hui Tan, Leonid A. Krivitsky, Berthold-Georg Englert

Proceedings Volume 9980, Quantum Communications and Quantum Imaging XIV; 99800E (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2239002
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2016, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Harnessing entanglement as a resource is the main workhorse of many quantum protocols, and establishing the degree of quantum correlations of quantum states is an important certification process that has to take place prior to any implementations of these quantum protocols. The emergence of photodetectors known as photon-number-resolving detectors (PNRDs) that allow for accounting of photon numbers simultaneously arriving at the detectors has led to the need for modeling accurately and applying them for use in the certification process. Here we study the variance of difference of photocounts (VDP) of two PNRDs, which is one measure of quantum correlations, under the effects of loss and saturation. We found that it would be possible to distinguish between the classical correlation of a two-mode coherent state and the quantum correlation of a twin-beam state within some photo count regime of the detector. We compare the behavior of two such PNRDs. The first for which the photocount statistics follow a binomial distribution accounting for losses, and the second is that of Agarwal, Vogel, and Sperling for which the incident beam is first split and then separately measured by ON/OFF detectors. In our calculations, analytical expressions are derived for the variance of difference where possible. In these cases, Gauss' hypergeometric function appears regularly, giving an insight to the type of quantum statistics the photon counting gives in these PNRDs. The different mechanisms of the two types of PNRDs leads to quantitative differences in their VDP.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Si-Hui Tan, Leonid A. Krivitsky, and Berthold-Georg Englert "Photon-number-resolving detectors and their role in quantifying quantum correlations", Proc. SPIE 9980, Quantum Communications and Quantum Imaging XIV, 99800E (4 October 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2239002

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