Abstract

Generation of nonclassical lights usually employs a phase sensitive deamplification process such as a degenerate parametric amplifier¹⁾ or a phase sensitive saturation process such as a pump-noise-suppressed laser²⁾. A completely different approach using nonunitary state reduction by quantum measurement is proposed in this talk. Arthurs and Kelly demonstrated that the system wavefunction after simultaneous measurement of two conjugate observables can be reduced to a new state with arbitrary squeezing determined by the measurement resolutions of the two observables³⁾. However, they have not shown any physically realizable Hamiltonian for such measurement. At optical frequency, measurements of photon number n, single quadrature amplitude a_s and two quadrature amplitudes ${\widehat{a}}_1$, and ${\widehat{a}}_2$ are realized by a photon counter, homodyne detector and heterodyne detector.

© 1988 Optical Society of America