- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Silent white light: Reduction of the second-order intensity correlation coefficient

Kai Niklas Hansmann1,*, Franziska Dommermuth1, Wolfgang Elsäßer1,2,3, and Reinhold Walser1

  • *Contact author: kai.hansmann@physik.tu-darmstadt.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 6, L032025 – Published 31 July, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L032025

Abstract

We investigate the intrawaveguide statistics manipulation of broadband light by combining semiconductor quantum dot physics with quantum optics. By cooling a quantum dot superluminescent diode to the liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K, Blazek et al. [Phys. Rev. A 84, 063840 (2011)] have demonstrated a temperature-dependent reduction of the second-order intensity correlation coefficient from 2 for thermal amplified spontaneous emission light to g(2)(0,T=190K)≈1.33. Here, we model the broadband photon statistics assuming amplified spontaneous emission radiation in a pumped, saturable quantum dot gain medium. We demonstrate that, by an intensity increase due to the quantum dot occupation dynamics via the temperature-tuned quasi-Fermi levels, together with the saturation nonlinearity, a statistics manipulation from thermal Bose-Einstein statistics towards Poissonian statistics can be realized, thus producing “silent white light” with a reduced second-order correlation coefficient. Such intensity-noise-reduced broadband radiation is relevant for many applications such as optical coherence tomography, optical communication, or optical tweezers.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (61)

  1. R. Pike, Lasers, photon statistics, photon-correlation spectroscopy and subsequent applications, J. Eur. Opt. Soc.-Rapid Publ. 5, 10047s (2010).
  2. C. Beenakker and C. Schönenberger, Quantum shot noise, Phys. Today 56(5), 37 (2003).
  3. R. Loudon, The Quantum Theory of Light, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2009).
  4. R. Hanbury Brown and R. Q. Twiss, Correlation between photons in two coherent beams of light, Nature (London) 177, 27 (1956).
  5. It is important to note that the Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment was originally conceived to exploit correlations of fluctuations for the determination of star diameters [4].
  6. W. Martienssen and E. Spiller, Coherence and fluctuations in light beams, Am. J. Phys. 32, 919 (1964).
  7. F. T. Arecchi, Measurement of the statistical distribution of Gaussian and laser sources, Phys. Rev. Lett. 15, 912 (1965).
  8. A. Gatti, D. Magatti, and F. Ferri, Three-dimensional coherence of light speckles: Theory, Phys. Rev. A 78, 063806 (2008).
  9. D. Magatti, A. Gatti, and F. Ferri, Three-dimensional coherence of light speckles: Experiment, Phys. Rev. A 79, 053831 (2009).
  10. M. Bertolitti, B. Crosignani, and P. di Porto, On the statistics of Gaussian light scattered by a Gaussian medium, J. Phys. A: Gen. Phys. 3, L37 (1970).
  11. K. A. O'Donnell, Speckle statistics of doubly scattered light, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 72, 1459 (1982).
  12. D. W. Schaefer and P. N. Pusey, Statistics of non-Gaussian scattered light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 29, 843 (1972).
  13. E. Jakeman and P. N. Pusey, Significance of K distributions in scattering experiments, Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 546 (1978).
  14. P. Lodahl, A. P. Mosk, and A. Lagendijk, Spatial quantum correlations in multiple scattered light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 173901 (2005).
  15. S. Hartmann, F. Friedrich, A. Molitor, M. Reichert, W. Elsäßer, and R. Walser, Tailored quantum statistics from broadband states of light, New J. Phys. 17, 043039 (2015).
  16. M. Kindermann, Y. V. Nazarov, and C. W. J. Beenakker, Manipulation of photon statistics of highly degenerate incoherent radiation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 063601 (2002).
  17. S. Balog, P. Zakharov, F. Scheffold, and S. E. Skipetrov, Photocount statistics in mesoscopic optics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 103901 (2006).
  18. H. E. Kondakci, A. Szameit, A. F. Abouraddy, D. N. Christodoulides, and B. E. A. Saleh, Sub-thermal to super-thermal light statistics from a disordered lattice via deterministic control of excitation symmetry, Optica 3, 477 (2016).
  19. J. Mork and K. Yvind, Squeezing of intensity noise in nanolasers and nanoLEDs with extreme dielectric confinement, Optica 7, 1641 (2020).
  20. H. E. Kondakci, A. F. Abouraddy, and B. E. A. Saleh, Lattice topology dictates photon statistics, Sci. Rep. 7, 8948 (2017).
  21. H. E. Kondakci, A. Szameit, A. F. Abouraddy, D. N. Christodoulides, and B. E. A. Saleh, Interferometric control of the photon-number distribution, APL Photonics 2, 071301 (2017).
  22. D. F. Walls, Evidence for the quantum nature of light, Nature (London) 280, 451 (1979).
  23. U. L. Andersen, T. Gehring, C. Marquardt, and G. Leuchs, 30 years of squeezed light generation, Phys. Scr. 91, 053001 (2016).
  24. D. B. Horoshko, M. I. Kolobov, F. Gumpert, I. Shand, F. König, and M. V. Chekhova, Nonlinear Mach–Zehnder interferometer with ultrabroadband squeezed light, J. Mod. Opt. 67, 41 (2020).
  25. E. S. Polzik, J. Carri, and H. J. Kimble, Spectroscopy with squeezed light, Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, 3020 (1992).
  26. H. Vahlbruch, M. Mehmet, S. Chelkowski, B. Hage, A. Franzen, N. Lastzka, S. Goßler, K. Danzmann, and R. Schnabel, Observation of squeezed light with 10-dB quantum-noise reduction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 033602 (2008).
  27. J. Aasi, J. Abadie, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. D. Abbott, M. R. Abernathy, C. Adams, T. Adams, P. Addesso, R. X. Adhikari et al., Enhanced sensitivity of the LIGO gravitational wave detector by using squeezed states of light, Nat. Photon. 7, 613 (2013).
  28. A. P. Foster, D. Hallett, I. V. Iorsh, S. J. Sheldon, M. R. Godsland, B. Royall, E. Clarke, I. A. Shelykh, A. M. Fox, M. S. Skolnick et al., Tunable photon statistics exploiting the Fano effect in a waveguide, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 173603 (2019).
  29. Y. Yamamoto, S. Machida, and W. H. Richardson, Photon number squeezed states in semiconductor lasers, Science 255, 1219 (1992).
  30. S. Machida, Y. Yamamoto, and Y. Itaya, Observation of amplitude squeezing in a constant-current–driven semiconductor laser, Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1000 (1987).
  31. S. M. Ulrich, C. Gies, S. Ates, J. Wiersig, S. Reitzenstein, C. Hofmann, A. Löffler, A. Forchel, F. Jahnke, and P. Michler, Photon statistics of semiconductor microcavity lasers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 043906 (2007).
  32. A. Allevi and M. Bondani, Direct detection of super-thermal photon-number statistics in second-harmonic generation, Opt. Lett. 40, 3089 (2015).
  33. A. Allevi, S. Cassina, and M. Bondani, Super-thermal light for imaging applications, Quantum Meas. Quantum Metrol. 4, 26 (2017).
  34. M. Blazek and W. Elsäßer, Coherent and thermal light: Tunable hybrid states with second-order coherence without first-order coherence, Phys. Rev. A 84, 063840 (2011).
  35. S. Hartmann, A. Molitor, M. Blazek, and W. Elsäßer, Tailored first- and second-order coherence properties of quantum dot superluminescent diodes via optical feedback, Opt. Lett. 38, 1334 (2013).
  36. S. Hartmann and W. Elsäßer, A novel semiconductor-based, fully incoherent amplified spontaneous emission light source for ghost imaging, Sci. Rep. 7, 41866 (2017).
  37. M. Blazek, S. Hartmann, A. Molitor, and W. Elsaesser, Unifying intensity noise and second-order coherence properties of amplified spontaneous emission sources, Opt. Lett. 36, 3455 (2011).
  38. D. Huang, E. A. Swanson, C. P. Lin, J. S. Schuman, W. G. Stinson, W. Chang, M. R. Hee, T. Flotte, K. Gregory, C. A. Puliafito, and J. G. Fujimoto, Optical coherence tomography, Science 254, 1178 (1991).
  39. K. Böhm, R. Ulrich, P. Russer, and E. Weidel, Low-noise fiber-optic rotation sensing, Opt. Lett. 6, 64 (1981).
  40. T. B. Pittman, Y. H. Shih, D. V. Strekalov, and A. V. Sergienko, Optical imaging by means of two-photon quantum entanglement, Phys. Rev. A 52, R3429(R) (1995).
  41. A. Gatti, M. Bache, D. Magatti, E. Brambilla, F. Ferri, and L. A. Lugiato, Coherent imaging with pseudo-thermal incoherent light, J. Mod. Opt. 53, 739 (2006).
  42. F. Friedrich, Hybrid coherent light - Modeling light-emitting quantum dot superluminescent diodes, Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2019, https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/8527.
  43. F. Friedrich, W. Elsäßer, and R. Walser, Emission spectrum of broadband quantum dot superluminescent diodes, Opt. Commun. 458, 124449 (2020).
  44. K. N. Hansmann and R. Walser, Stochastic simulation of emission spectra and classical photon statistics of quantum dot superluminescent diodes, J. Mod. Phys. 12, 22 (2021).
  45. I. V. Doronin, E. S. Andrianov, A. A. Zyablovsky, A. A. Pukhov, Y. E. Lozovik, A. P. Vinogradov, and A. A. Lisyansky, Second-order coherence properties of amplified spontaneous emission, Opt. Express 27, 10991 (2019).
  46. R. Walser and P. Zoller, Laser-noise-induced polarization fluctuations as a spectroscopic tool, Phys. Rev. A 49, 5067 (1994).
  47. H. Huang and D. Deppe, Rate equation model for nonequilibrium operating conditions in a self-organized quantum-dot laser, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 37, 691 (2001).
  48. A. E. Zhukov, V. M. Ustinov, A. Y. Egorov, A. R. Kovsh, A. F. Tsatsulnikov, N. N. Ledentsov, S. V. Zaitsev, N. Y. Gordeev, P. S. Kopev, and Z. I. Alferov, Negative characteristic temperature of InGaAs quantum dot injection laser, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 36, 4216 (1997).
  49. M. Blazek and W. Elsäßer, Emission state hierarchy governed coherence and intensity noise properties of quantum dot superluminescent diodes, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 48, 1578 (2012).
  50. E. N. Leith and G. J. Swanson, Achromatic interferometers for white light optical processing and holography, Appl. Opt. 19, 638 (1980).
  51. K. Naganuma, K. Mogi, and H. Yamada, Group-delay measurement using the Fourier transform of an interferometric cross correlation generated by white light, Opt. Lett. 15, 393 (1990).
  52. T. V. Amotchkina, A. V. Tikhonravov, M. K. Trubetskov, D. Grupe, A. Apolonski, and V. Pervak, Measurement of group delay of dispersive mirrors with white-light interferometer, Appl. Opt. 48, 949 (2009).
  53. F. O. Laforge, M. S. Kirschner, and H. A. Rabitz, Shaped incoherent light for control of kinetics: Optimization of up-conversion hues in phosphors, J. Chem. Phys. 149, 054201 (2018).
  54. S. Zheng, M. Ren, X. Luo, H. Zhang, and G. Feng, Real-time compensation for SLD light-power fluctuation in an interferometric fiber-optic gyroscope, Sensors 23, 1925 (2023).
  55. V. M. Passaro, A. Cuccovillo, L. Vaiani, M. De Carlo, and C. E. Campanella, Gyroscope technology and applications: A review in the industrial perspective, Sensors 17, 2284 (2017).
  56. C. Cohen-Tannoudji, J. Dupont-Roc, and G. Grynberg, Atom–Photon Interactions (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 1998).
  57. P. Meystre and M. Sargent, Elements of Quantum Optics (Springer, Berlin, 2007).
  58. F. W. J. Olver, A. B. Olde Daalhuis, D. W. Lozier, B. I. Schneider, R. F. Boisvert, C. W. Clark, B. R. Miller, B. V. Saunders, H. S. Cohl, and M. A. McClain, NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions, http://dlmf.nist.gov/, release 1.1.9 of 2023 March 15.
  59. M. Blazek, Thermisch und kohärent: Erzeugung neuartiger Lichtzustände mittels Quantenpunkt-Superlumineszenzdioden, Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2011, https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/3079/.
  60. M. Blazek, S. Breuer, T. Gensty, W. E. Elsäßer, M. Hopkinson, K. M. Groom, M. Calligaro, P. Resneau, and M. Krakowski, Intensity noise of ultrabroadband quantum dot light emitting diodes and lasers at 1.3 µm, Proc. SPIE 6603, 66031Y (2007).
  61. S. Shin, U. Sharma, H. Tu, W. Jung, and S. A. Boppart, Characterization and analysis of relative intensity noise in broadband optical sources for optical coherence tomography, IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett. 22, 1057 (2010).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 6, L032025– Published 31 July, 2024
  • Received 13 October 2023
  • Accepted 24 June 2024
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation