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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Quantum State Engineering of Light with Continuous-wave Optical Parametric Oscillators
Published on: May 30, 2014
Probing the negative Wigner function of a pulsed single photon point by point
Kaisa Laiho1, Katiúscia N Cassemiro, David Gross
1Max Planck Institute for Science of Light, Günther-Scharowsky-straße 1/Building 24, 91058 Erlangen, Germany. kaisa.laiho@mpl.mpg.de
Abstract:
We investigate quantum properties of pulsed light fields point by point in phase space. We probe the negative region of the Wigner function of a single photon generated by the means of waveguided parametric down conversion. This capability is achieved by employing loss-tolerant photon-number resolving detection, allowing us to directly observe the oscillations of the photon statistics in dependence of applied displacements in phase space. Our scheme is highly mode sensitive and can reveal the single-mode character of the signal state.
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