Experimental study of balanced optical homodyne and heterodyne detection by controlling sideband modulation

We experimentally study optical homodyne and heterodyne detections with the same setup, which is flexible to manipulate the signal sideband modulation. When the modulation only generates a single signal sideband, the light field measurement by mixing the single sideband at ω0 ±Ω with a strong local...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science China. Physics, mechanics & astronomy mechanics & astronomy, 2015-10, Vol.58 (10), p.23-27, Article 104201
Main Authors: Li, Wei, Yu, XuDong, Meng, ZengMing, Jin, YuanBin, Zhang, Jing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomy
Carrier frequencies
Classical and Continuum Physics
Observations and Techniques
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum phenomena
Signal to noise ratio
Single sideband transmission
光场测量
光学
单边带调制
外差检测
实验
平衡零拍探测
控制
零差检测
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Summary:We experimentally study optical homodyne and heterodyne detections with the same setup, which is flexible to manipulate the signal sideband modulation. When the modulation only generates a single signal sideband, the light field measurement by mixing the single sideband at ω0 ±Ω with a strong local oscillator at the carrier frequency ω0 on a beam splitter becomes balanced heterodyne detection. When two signal sidebands at ω0 ±Ω are generated and the relative phase of the two sidebands is locked, this measurement corresponds to optical balanced homodyne detection. With this setup, we may confirm directly that the signal-to-noise ratio with heterodyne detection is two-fold worse than that with homodyne detection. This work will have important applications in quantum state measurement and quantum information.
ISSN:1674-7348
1869-1927
DOI:10.1007/s11433-015-5718-z