Metrology with nonclassical light

Abstract

In 1963 Glauber /Phys. Rev. 130, 2529 and 131, 2766/ published a basic theoretical study that revealed the broad variety of possible photon states. Later on a quantum-statistical analysis showed that states with classical analog (this light Is termed classical light) as well as states without classical analog (so-called nonclassical light) can occur. Following the definition given by Teich, Saleh, and Perina /JOSAB2 (1985) 275) nonclassical light exhibits one or more of the attributes squeezed, antibunched, sub-Poissonian, what is connected with a negative value of the field-fluctuation excess, the bunching excess, or the Poisson excess. These negative values mean quantum fluctuations below the classical standard quantum limits of ideal laser light; thus, nonclassical light may yield an essential improvement of the optical measurement accuracy, in particular of the signal-to-noise ratio. There exists a common property of the three attributes concerning the Glauber-Sudarshan representation P(c ), which is the real weight function belonging to the incoherent mixture (density operators) of Glauber states with different complex amplitudes. In the case of classical light P(oc ) is a positive definite function, whereas nonclassical light requires a nonpositive definite function P(o.), which cannot be interpreted as a proper probability distribution - as it is possible in the case of light with a classical analog /M. Schubert, Ann. d. Phys. 4k (1987) 53/. In addition to its possible important applications nonclassical light yields a deep insight into the quantum nature of the radiation field.