Abstract
The generation of strongly squeezed vacuum states of light is a key technology for future ground-based gravitational wave detectors (GWDs) to reach sensitivities beyond their quantum noise limit. For some proposed observatory designs, an operating laser wavelength of 1550nm or around 2 μm is required to enable the use of cryogenically cooled silicon test masses for thermal noise reduction. Here, we present for the first time the direct measurement of up to 11.5dB squeezing at 1550nm over the complete detection bandwidth of future ground-based GWDs ranging from 10kHz down to below 1Hz. Furthermore, we directly observe a quantum shot-noise reduction of up to (13.5±0.1) dB at megahertz frequencies. This allows us to derive a precise constraint on the absolute quantum efficiency of the photodiode used for balanced homodyne detection. These results hold important insight regarding the quantum noise reduction efficiency in future GWDs, as well as for quantum information and cryptography, where low decoherence of nonclassical states of light is also of high relevance.
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